Film Photography News — May 2025 Recap

☞ This is the 74th 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?

Ilford launched Kentmere 200 black-and-white film and began offering Delta 3200 in bulk rolls, RETO made a new panoramic film camera, and Jolylook made a new hand-crankable Instax Wide back for DIY cameras.

This month’s winner of 3 FREE Cinema Shorts 50D/500T rolls is announced. Plus, updates to the only web-based fully-featured film inversion tool, overexposure guides, and community submissions!

💛 GOLD members get to invert 12 GiB of film negatives every month with film Q, learn how to overexpose and get pastel colours on film, master metering light without a light meter, and read about the unusual analogue photography experiments.

🎁 Try GOLD free for 14 days! In this newsletter: What’s new? RETO PANO. film Q v1.0.0-beta.100 Ilford Kentmere PAN 200. How to get pastel colours on film. Jollylook Instax Wide. Community submissions. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Cinema Shorts is hand-rolled Kodak Vision 3 film with remjet; it comes with a development manual in plastic-free and 100% recycled packaging.

This film features outstanding colour, resolution, and dynamic range. Developed for multimillion-dollar motion picture productions, Kodak Vision 3 is the gold standard for screen and still photography quality.

I have a limited hand-rolled batch of this film, branded with the new signature dark Cinema Shorts design, packed in threes with a signed, updated development guide & international lab list. It is a mix of the 50D and 500T speeds.

This film is not for sale, but I am giving away boxes of it every month to a lucky GOLD member until September 2025.

This month’s winner is John Brand! 🎉

RETO PANO.

RETO released a new film camera with a panoramic mask switch, fixed 1/100s shutter, and a fixed focus acrylic 22mm 𝒇9.5 lens.

The camera is priced at just $35, and if the quality is anything like their earlier Ektar H35N, it would be a winner in my book.

Learn more about this camera in yesterday’s announcement.

film Q v1.0.0-beta.10

This May, I’ve updated film Q to optionally invert your film negatives into lossless 16-bit TIFF files. While the default high-quality JPEG files with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling already offer enormous editorial flexibility, this update can be useful for professional archival applications and certain post-scan/pre-print corrections.

film Q is the only film inversion tool that works on any device with a web browser, takes zero of your computer’s memory/RAM to process large, high-resolution scans (inc. TIFFs and camera RAWs), and features one-click batch processing with automated new file detection.

film Q does not add saturation, contrast, sharpening, or apply LUTs to your scans. Instead, it renders truly unedited inversions. Read this guide to learn how to take full advantage of the flat film scans.

film Q is FREE for all Analog.Cafe GOLD members.

Ilford Kentmere PAN 200.

Ilford surprised their fans this month with a new speed for their line of affordable black-and-white films, the ISO 200 Kentmere PAN.

The announcement was well-received, backed by the fact that the final results often do not reveal how much you paid for your film and the company’s excellent reputation when it comes to black-and-white film.

Speaking of film prices, Ilford is now offering its fastest film, Delta 3200, in bulk rolls for about $230. According to Bulk Roll Calculator, this yields 19 rolls of 36exp. + extra — or about $12 per roll. That’s $9 cheaper than the current average price of this film!

How to get pastel colours on film.

Not all film can be safely overexposed, and not every overexposed film frame will have pastel colours. This article shows exactly how you can get this look.

Jollylook Instax Wide.

Jollylook completed their range of hand-cranked instant film development units with an Instax Wide back.

If you ever find yourself making a camera from scratch — whether it’s a pinhole or a gingerbread camera with a sugar lens — you may find these tools particularly useful. Unlike regular film, they make testing and iteration much faster (though not particularly cheap).

Community submissions.

Several community submissions made it to Analog.Cafe this month — I’m thrilled and incredibly grateful for all the work the authors put into their essays and guides:

The Kubrick Code is Danilo Leondardi’s 12th submission that explores his exceptionally well-researched topic of the importance of technical knowledge for photographers. The essay is illustrated with delightful shots on Kodak T-Max P3200 from the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Design Museum in London.

Lucky Mistakes is Eva’s celebration of the random chance in photography. I found her suggestion that creative (and non-creative) works may rely on a great deal of chance, no matter how well-prepared the person behind the camera is — and they can look lovely!

Film Notes & Metadata With Frames is Vincent Tantardini’s handsome new project, designed to help keep detailed notes during the shoot on Mac and iPhone.

Vincent’s apps are free to use! I think they’re worth a try.

Where to Develop, Scan, and Print Film in Bangkok is travelling_photographer’s latest guide to one of Southeast Asia’s busiest creative hubs, listing ten labs along with short descriptions of scan quality, products offered, and how to find them — including the ones that marked as “permanently closed” on Google while still actually in business!

Don’t miss travelling_photographer’s other guide, Where to Develop, Scan, and Print Film in Bali, and their invaluable contributions to Where to Develop Film in Chiang Mai.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported, read, and contributed to Analog.Cafe for the past eight-plus years on the web! I am working on publishing more submissions this June, plus a few other exciting pieces. It’s gonna be a good month. ❤️