Harman, the company that makes the famous black-and-white Ilford emulsions, has just released a redscale version of their Phoenix 200 film.
Redscaling means loading colour film into your camera “upside-down,” which produces strong red tones on a darker exposure.
You can redscale any colour film at home (see below), even Phoenix 200.
Harman’s Red 125 has new packaging with an updated DX code to reflect the film’s lower sensitivity to light. The factory also printed the edge markings on the correct side so that all commercial labs could easily identify, develop, and scan this film.
A technical document about Red 125 (found here: harmanphoto.co.uk/amfile/f…) prints characteristic curves which show about 4 stops of composite dynamic range (3 for the red channel) and a very cool spectral sensitivity graphic.
Whereas the “normal” Harman Phoenix 200 came with special scanning instructions for commercial labs, the Red 125 document suggests standard settings for all scanners.
Film Ferrania’s Facebook page has been in the hands of alleged scammers for almost two years. It can be rough on the Internet, even for well-known brands.
Though I haven’t had my account stolen 🤞, it appears that restoring one can be difficult. In Lomography’s case, they were able to regain full access, but all of their content and followers vanished, prompting the company to ask us, the community, to re-follow as they rebuild their presence on the platform. See attached.
Film Ferrania’s Facebook page still has all of its original posts and comments up. Ferrania’s last post was on April 2, 2023; you can see the comments related to film photography under it. But the photos and the caption are in Vietnamese, and the profile name is now Bảo Lasvegas. Bảo’s subsequent messages are cryptic cringe, advertising a service that has the appearance of a pyramid scheme.
My understanding of these hacks is that they aren’t personal — rather a programmed automated attack designed to take over popular, poorly secured accounts and sell them to someone looking spam or appear reputable.
If you’re worried about your account, I suggest using a password manager service (1Password is good) and enabling two-factor authentication. You can go a step further and use an authenticator app like Google Authenticator.
Last week, Lomography updated its premium *multi-format* instant film camera designs with Pemberley (pictured) and The Blues.
Lomo’Instant Square Glass works with Instax Square *and* Instax Mini films via an interchangeable film back (compare film dimensions here: analog.cafe/r/instant-film…). It uses a 95mm lens (45mm equivalent — presumably with the square format), and its two apertures: 𝒇10 and 𝒇22 that you’ll need to zone focus (how to zone focus: analog.cafe/r/how-to-zone-…). Its fully automatic shutter can fire between 1/125s and 8s with a 30s max delay in Bulb mode.
With ‘Instant, you get to control flash, multiple exposures, and exposure compensation — but it’s otherwise a fully automatic film camera.
Glass lenses are a relatively new offering for a brand that’s been known for its plastic “toy” cameras, like the Diana Mini (analog.cafe/r/diana-mini-7…). Yet, Lomography is serious about their designs (see my Nour Triplet 2.0 review: analog.cafe/r/nour-triplet…) and a transition to a higher quality and pricepoint products in their lineup (they were the first in a long time to release a glass lens 110 camera: analog.cafe/comments/0jn2).
Film prices for Canadians should not be immediately affected by the new tariffs but 2026 may get expensive for all Kodak customers.
Kodak will be raising film prices this year for its distributors (analog.cafe/comments/snzw). In addition to those manufacturer-originated price hikes, the US’ new tariff measures (nypost.com/2025/02/01/us-n…) may affect what Kodak pays for raw material imports from Canada, Mexico, and China to make its products.
Now what?
Film price at the counter typically changes long after the manufacturer’s increase announcements. This is because retailers and distributors hold stock and have varying business interests and opportunities that delay the effect of manufacturers’ price changes by 1-6 months (data: analog.cafe/app/film-price… can be correlated with Kodak’s price announcements).
Kodak’s long production chain, from raw material sourcing to packaged, shipped, and delivered products, means that the effect of the tariffs on photographic film may not be known until 2026 (also: film manufacturers have historically limited their price increase announcements to no more than 1-2 a year).
Canadians: our Kodak film prices should NOT be immediately affected by the new tariffs: canada.ca/en/department-fi… (not listed).
ONDU Pinhole stops making pinhole cameras to focus on large format and “other projects.”
For film photographers in the know, ONDU has been synonymous with a high-quality pinhole camera for over a decade. Unfortunately, for those who grew to love their lensless products, the Slovenian camera maker is abandoning their namesake practice.
In their recent email (thank you, Kari), Elvis Halilović announced that ONDU Pinhole will no longer manufacture pinhole cameras in order to focus on large format and “other projects.”
Understandably, the news disappointed fans of some of the best lensless cameras on the market. However, ONDU isn’t the only pinhole camera maker, and perhaps their departure will make space for other ambitious projects, like Mania MFZ (analog.cafe/comments/r336).
I messaged ONDU earlier to get a statement from them but haven’t heard back yet (will update this post if they reply).
***
On Instagram (instagram.com/p/DFf3jkusN56), Elvis mentioned his desire to explore creativity in new ways. No one wants to feel stuck. Best of luck to ONDU and I’m looking forward to seeing more products from the shop.
ONDU’s latest large format camera was announced last year on Analog.Cafe. Read about it here: analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…
Myriad is a new multi-format holder for scanning film with digital cameras.
This new design by CUTASUNDA (run by Michael Swift from North East of England) accepts virtually all roll film sizes 110, APS, 126, 135, 127, 120/220, etc. The holder is available from the CUTASUNDA website for £99.95 ($125): cutasunda.com/products.html — or you can try your luck at Pentax Forums, where a Myriad giveaway is running until February 21st: pentaxforums.com/articles/…
Myriad was in development for over two years to ensure safe, scratch-free film transport, reliability, and perfectly flat film scanning.
For it to work, you must supply your own light source — a high-CRI LED light panel (such as the excellent Raleno PLV-S192) is recommended. Of course, you’ll also need your digital camera and a stand.
Myriad will let you scan negatives up to 6x9 in dimensions and keep your film flat with no more than 0.4mm variance (however, it may have trouble with exceptionally curly film). The holder is made from premium plastics that are precision laser-cut, which melts the material in the process, leaving it perfectly smooth. The finely-textured diffuser panel ensures there are no Newton rings. The adjustable film guides let you switch easily from one film size to another. More info: cutasunda.com/resources.ht…
I’ll add a couple more images and scan samples to this thread shortly. 🧵
Light Lens Lab has announced yet another new film emulsion just in time for the Lunar New Year.
Their current project is a T-grain black-and-white film — a modern-style fine-grained emulsion, the results of which Light Lens Lab shared on their blog: lightlenslab.com/blogs/upc…
The new film does not have an anti-halation layer (thus producing a similar effect as the CineStill 800T made popular — but in black-and-white). In monochrome, the images produced in this film look sharp, with a bit of haze around brightly lit objects. That, LLL said, will be fixed in the new batch.
The fact that a relatively young lab managed to produce a T-grain emulsion (which is the most advanced tech we have for producing small, tightly packed crystals — more: analog.cafe/r/ilford-delta…) is very impressive. Yet LLL’s ambitions do not stop there as their announcement lists all modern film chemistries (including colour films) in their future plans. Can they manage that? We’re yet to see.
One thing’s for certain is that the demand for film is now reaching a critical mass — enough to encourage well-resourced businesses to enter the market and attempt to compete with the likes of Ilford, Kodak, and Fujifilm.
Light Lens Lab was founded in 2018 by Mr. Zhou in Shangrao, China, “dedicated to optical research, development, and manufacturing of high-quality photographic equipment.”
Reveni Labs launches LUMO, a $140 compact incident/reflective light meter with a full-colour display.
The new meter can take readings for ambient and flash units. It can also provide incident colour temperature readout, flash-to-ambient light ratio, flash duration, and discharge curve analysis. It comes with Cine Incident and Cine Reflective modes with shutter angle/framerate selection.
LUMO uses a user-replaceable NiMH rechargeable battery that can be topped up with the built-in USB-C port. For flash, it uses a high-voltage compatible 3.5mm trigger port. The display is a 1.1” full-colour LCD.
While I don’t personally use external meters frequently (typically, it’s a built-in meter or the Sunny 16 rule: analog.cafe/r/master-the-s…), this device seems very useful for film (movie) production and photography metering when you want to reassurances or calculations involving flash.
This is Matt Bechberger’s (Reveni Labs’ owner) fifth Kickstarter project. It reached 20% of the funding goal in just a few minutes after going live at 9 AM PST. Given it reaches 100% in the next 30 days (it will), LUMO will go into production this March and ship later this year.
The new Fujifilm’s Instax WIDE Evo uses a 16mm 𝒇2.4 lens to capture images on its ⅓” 16MP sensor and print on film in 635 × 318 DPI.
The new $349.95 instant film camera (available in February) was announced earlier this week as a follow-up to Fujifilm’s earlier Evo Mini (analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…).
Evo is a series of *digital* cameras that capture images on their sensors and let the user edit or add effects before printing. The cameras use a built-in light-emitting printer to project the image onto film before it’s ejected/developed.
The WIDE Evo is an upgrade to their earlier Instax Mini model, which was criticized for its low-resolution sensor and printer. The new sensor resolves a lot more pixels (16MP vs. the Mini’s 5MP). However, the printer’s resolution has remained mostly the same with 635 × 318 DPI.
The digital sensor arms Evo with a top shutter speed of 1/8000s, ISO sensitivity of 100 to 1600, white balance controls, and 10 × 10 × 6 effects.
To take advantage of the above specs, you’ll need to insert a memory card and use the camera’s widest setting with its 16mm full-frame equivalent lens. That’s wide!
If the lens took photos directly on film, its true focal length would be 6.5mm, but with the camera’s ⅓” sensor, it’s about 100mm.
The autofocus (w/ face recognition) works between 10cm-∞.
Alas, there’s no viewfinder, so you’d have to compose using the built-in 3.5” display.
“According to a contact from Reflx Lab who recently visited Lucky Film’s headquarters in Hebei, China, the new color film is expected to hit the market in Q2 2025. It’s projected to be the most affordable color film available” — reflxlab.com/en-ca/blogs/n…
Lucky Film used to make colour film for Kodak but the new project will be an independent production. Lucky is (assumingly) not the same as Fujifilm’s new facility in China: analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…
Also, there were rumours online that Ferrania was going out of business. But it looks like *they are not,* although they have been difficult to reach recently, the website was down for some time, and their film stock is low. Eventually, someone from Ferrania (it’s a city; look it up!) came back with the good news: the company is still active.
When developing black-and-white film, you may need to calculate the concentrate vs water (dilution) measurements. These measurements change depending on how much solution you’d like to mix.
For example, 300ml or 10oz of developer solution will cover a single 35mm film — but what does that mean for water and concentrate volumes if you’re developing with Rodinal at 1+25 dilution?
To get the exact water and concentrate volumes needed for the 300ml mix, you’ll need to solve this equation:
x = (1/25) × (300 — x)
…Where “x” is the amount of developer needed.
The answer is 11.54ml of developer, which leaves us with 300 — 11.54 = 288.46ml of water. To check the answer, we can divide 288.46 by 11.54, which gives us 25 (one part developer, 25 parts water). This answer should be rounded to the more practical 290ml and 12ml, or it can be converted to 10oz and 12ml for the US/UK beakers.
(Note that the rounding should ideally differ for ounces and millilitres, and it may be prudent to round the concentrate volume up.)
Chemical Dilution Calculator does all of the above. It also automatically switches default measurement units based on your location and lets you see the precise measurements if needed.
The Chemical Dilution Calculator is part of the Chem Log app. To use it, launch this page: analog.cafe/app/chem-log, and click the purple “Dilution Calculator” button.
I’ve added free trials to the GOLD subscriber-only apps and articles on Analog.Cafe to help you decide whether a membership is worth the commitment.
You can try Chem Log (analog.cafe/app/chem-log), Film Price Trends (analog.cafe/app/film-price…), and Bulk Roll Calculator (analog.cafe/app/bulk-roll-…) for 7 days with no limits and no credit card. On top of that, you can try all of the website features and member-only articles, like the latest, “Pushing Ilford HP5+ to ISO 100,000” (analog.cafe/r/pushing-ilfo…), for 14 days with a card. I will remind you a week before the trial runs out.
Memberships helped keep Analog.Cafe ad-free and 97% free for thousands of readers from 201 countries in 2024. Thank you all who have, are currently, or are considering becoming GOLD members in 2025. Your support means a lot to this resource and its full-time staff of one!
Analogue aF-1 is a new, relatively affordable, premium point-and-shoot camera expected to launch this summer.
The project, which has been in development for over two years, came across my radar late last year. Yet, given that the launch page (af1.analogueshop.com/) has only shared renders (i.e., not the actual photos of the product) and team Analogue has admitted that the sample image on that page was not taken with their camera in the comment on Kosmo Foto’s article (kosmofoto.com/2025/01/anal…), I wanted to do a bit more research before publishing this #editorial🔥.
First, the specs: the €399/$412 camera (with pre-launch discount, €339/$349) would feature a six-element 35mm 𝒇2.8 lens with a Lidar autofocus, autoexposure (only), motorized film transport, shutter speed up to 1/1000, flash, and DX-code reader for ISO25-5000.
When I reached out to Analogue, they added that the camera might also feature exposure compensation (+1.5EV) for backlit scenes and a flash override. However, they haven’t yet responded to my request for a chat or an interview (I’ll update this thread if they do).
I did find a video by Analogue Amsterdam, where a short clip featured a physical (dummy model?) of the camera in their customers’ hands: youtube.com/watch?v=SflI-y…
Mania MFZ is a wooden multi-format, multi-focal-length, multi-pinhole camera system.
A new Kickstarter project by a carpenter/photographer, Ralph Man, promises to “expand the boundaries of pinhole camera capabilities many times over.”
Ralph’s wooden pinhole camera system is expensive (as quality woodworking tends to be), and it may not pan out (given that it’s only 10% funded), but there are still 25 days to go. Whatever the case may be, I think you may enjoy learning about the most-featured pinhole camera design, probably ever:
- The camera can expose 6x6, 6x12, and 6x17 medium format frames (presumably panoramic 135 film formats as well with adapters).
- It takes 4x5 film holders and Lomo Graflock 4x5.
- It can take side-by-side exposures for panoramic exposures.
- It can make shift exposures.
- It takes gel filters.
- It can switch focal lengths from 35mm to 135mm in 20mm increments.
Year-end sale on film, lenses, and cameras: 25% off + free shipping.
I’ve tested a lot of gear this year, some of which are listed at the Etsy shop I run alongside Analog.Cafe, FilmBase. Every piece is thoroughly tested, and everything has exhaustive descriptions and product images. Cameras, lenses, film, books, and more.
FilmBase is a tiny seller that consistently receives five-star ratings and great reviews. I try to ship things as fast as possible and package everything in either upcycled or plastic-free materials. US and Canada only, unfortunately.
Defective disposable cameras and badly respooled film rolls cause issues at film labs and ruin images.
Fujifilm issued a statement to labs about an offending product that may produce unusable images and even damage the minilab machines. There’s also a growing number of posts on social media by lab technicians sharing various problems with rolls and disposables.
Some of those posts suggest that Kodak’s recent rule-tightening about sales of Vision 3 film (see: analog.cafe/comments/up67) may be related to the rise of improper processing and respooling of that film.
The deffective products aren’t necessarily cheaper than quality film but they are always disappointing to the photographers who use them and are upsetting to the lab technicians who have to deal with the fallout while seeing their potential customers get discouraged about film altogether.
The camera in the photo is an example of a product most labs won’t accept (thanks to Fujifilm’s statement, aparently sent to their minilab machine owners). It’s possible that some technicians may be discouraged from processing any product the brand which they do not recognize.
Smartflex, a lightweight 4x5 SLR, launched and reached its goal on Kickstarter within just a few days.
The camera weighs just over 2kg/4.4lb and uses a segmented mirror system to solve “the major issue of short flange distance lenses while ensuring no light leaks.” It uses a 5x5” horizontal ground-glass viewfinder. It’s also possible to use a mobile device with this camera (to film videos via an enormous LF lens) and Instax Wide film.
Various photos and images of the camera show its creator using it hand-held, which is certainly unique for this format. I wrote about this project earlier this year — see some of that footage here: analog.cafe/comments/kqi9
The Omnar 35mm f/3.5 Pantessa FLB is a premium Yashica T* lens rehousing for Leica M-mount, with an image circle large enough for Fuji GFX 100ii and Hasselblad X2D¹.
“The optical formula has been modified[…] to reposition the glass elements into a continually optimized state[…] we have designed the lens so the position of the optical block subtly moves within the housing as the aperture is adjusted[…] This design feature, which is entirely unique to our rehousing, is the key reason the Pantessa lens maintains such high optical performance and rangefinder accuracy across the entire 0.65m through Infinity RF coupled focus distance.” — Omnar.
The Omnar 35mm f/3.5 Pantessa FLB is available to pre-order off the Omnar Lenses website today for £1950 (~$2,435).
This lens’s first limited production run has just 20 units, which Omnar expects to ship by the end of February 2025.
¹ — With adapter. Some vignetting on Hassy. See samples below.
Rveni Labs made a special holder that adapts a portable laser rangefinder device to film cameras.
Zone focusing isn’t difficult, but if you’d prefer to have *laser focus* with your manual film camera, there’s now an affordable way to do this. Reveni Labs, a Canadian startup that manufactures film camera accessories, made a holder with a mirror that lets you clip a small laser rangefinder tool, AquilaPro, on top of your camera.
AquilaPro, which sells for $30, is very accurate, down to 0.078”. There’s about an inch of discrepancy between the actual and measured distance due to the gap between the rangefinder and the mirror introduced by the holder — which won’t be consequential unless you’re shooting with an extremely narrow depth of field. The rangefinder’s limit is 98’ (30m), which can be assumed as an infinity mark (assuming reasonable DOF).
NONS CAMERA, a startup from Hong Kong/Shenzhen known for its Instax film cameras with high-quality lenses, is teasing the release of a new Hasselblad Instax Square back. youtube.com/shorts/3YK6AJM…
You may’ve noticed in the above video that the photographer mounts a filter on top of the lens and one more on top of the viewfinder. Here’s why it’s important:
The challenge of using the Instax Square format with Hasselblad is that the actual 6x6 frame of a medium format camera is 56mm × 56mm, which is smaller than Instax Square’s 62cm × 62cm by 3mm on each side, producing a black border.
NONS modified the projection focus via an additional lens element further back, which made it larger. This allowed them to “enlarge” Hasselblad photos to snuggly fit in an Instax Square.
NONS’ earlier Hasselblad back (reg: $279) produced a thin black border inside Instax Square exposures. The new version does not.
The new back is expected to launch in Q1 2025, according to their Instagram announcement: instagram.com/p/DDeO1-iS0c…. NONS also confirmed (in the link above) that they do not intend to discontinue their earlier back (one that produces borders), and the new version will have film ejection and darkslide operation similar to that of the classic Hasselblad backs (i.e., “less awkward,” according to some commenters’ implied feedback).
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