Film Photography News — March 2025 Recap

☞ This is the 72nd monthly Analog.Cafe Newsletter with the latest film photography lore. Sign up to get it via email on the last Tuesday of every month (it’s free).

What’s new?

Lomography’s new DigitaLIZA rigs make scanning film easier 🤝 film Q is a new film inversion app from Analog.Cafe. Cameradactyl invents a new “film” format, plus ORWO teases a new ISO 200 colour film (and we know what it looks like!)

💛 GOLD members get to use the new film negative inversion app, film Q, and see the first test frames from the ongoing “Greenscaling Aerochrome” experiment.

🎁 Try GOLD free for 14 days! In this newsletter: What’s new? film Q — a new film inversion tool from Analog.Cafe! Lomography’s new DigitaLIZA scanning rigs. New ISO 200 colour-negative film from ORWO. Cameradactyl invents new “film” format. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

film Q — a new film inversion tool from Analog.Cafe!

film Q is a new web app that inverts film scans (TIFFs, JPEGs, camera RAW files, and more) quickly in batches, works with internet-connected devices, and takes no system resources to process large images.

film Q’s core technology is histogram equalization, a simple, time-proven method for inverting film negatives. Histogram equalization does not affect the original colour balance or saturation; it removes the orange mask and base fog by equalizing the contrast space.

Because film Q does not process files on your device — everything is done on Analog.Cafe servers (located in Toronto, Canada) — you can control it with anything that has a web browser, like a Mac, an Android phone, an iPad, or that vintage Windows 95 computer.

film Q is made for batch processing. As the name suggests, you can queue up dozens or hundreds of film scans and let the app do its thing.

Last but not least, film Q can be used as a plug-in solution to your secure film negative archive.

Learn more about this app or try it now (FREE).

Please note that film Q is currently in Beta. Do share your experiences and feature requests with me to help make this app better!

Lomography’s new DigitaLIZA scanning rigs.

Speaking of scans, the new DigitaLIZA+ and DigitaLIZA Max modular scanning rigs work with digital cameras and phones as scanners, feature a CRI 97 light source and accept 35mm, 120, 110, and 127 formats.

The Max comes with a phone stand ($100), whereas both Max and DigitaLIZA+ ($80) include a light, a film holder, and various masks. The medium format holder has the widest gate of 6x7.

My favourite features of this new product are the magnetic film holders and the CRI 97 light source, which is bound to give more accurate, richer colours than the previous generation.

New ISO 200 colour-negative film from ORWO.

Kosmo Foto reminded us last week about ORWO’s upcoming new colour film. In his post, Stephen recalled last year’s mention of a secretive project in a video by Nico’s Photography Show.

Nico promised to share his results shortly. Alas, he did not.

In fact, no mention of this film on the anglophone blogs has any samples attached — only speculations of what it may look like. Some suggest it may not produce colours any more vividly than the NC 500 series, whereas Nico claimed that it would.

Well, it turns out that some people already have test rolls in their hands, and they’ve shared their results on obscure forum threads. My favourite sample was posted by Jürgen Lossau on Filmvorführer.de. The film appears to have natural-looking colours with greater variations in tonality in the foliage — a welcome improvement over the NC 500 (which painted the greens in seemingly just one hue).

User @stereograph shared his scans from the new ORWO NC 200 film (shot in 120) on Lomography’s Lomo Home website.

@stereograph’s uploads are higher resolution than the one I found on the German forum, and they show very pronounced grain, which appears to be as prominent as that on NC 500. His images also reveal the film’s limited dynamic range, yet they seem to also confirm the much-improved colour palette of this new emulsion. Note the brilliant blue sky in the first image; this would not be possible with ORWO’s previous stocks without bumping saturation in post significantly.

Cameradactyl invents new “film” format.

Earlier this month, Ethan Moses of Cameradactyl posted a video about his invention, a new “film” format that uses roll RA-4 paper to make about 100 4x5 exposures in a giant daylight canister. The rolls can be used in Ethan’s enormous TLR-like camera or adapted to 4x5 cameras as a back.

Ethan has also developed a tank system that pulls the paper from the cartridge through chemicals, exposes it to light and pulls it into another chemical bath before producing positives. His video about this project can be seen here, and you can also watch In An Instant talk about this new feat of photochemical engineering.