Watch Jeff and Suzan Bridges unbox WideluxX #1 and WideluxX #2 German-made panoramic film cameras.
A Hollywood celebrity has recently joined a German print-only English-language magazine about film photography to rebuild a mechanical swing-lens panoramic film camera that is a reverse-engineered version of a legendary Japanese product from a factory that kept terrible records, then burned down and disappeared. The result: beautiful, working cameras and genuine joy and pride in Jeff and Suzan’s eyes.
These cameras are expected to be the first of an upcoming line of high-quality cameras made in Germany (with lots of cool metal parts, spring-loaded gears, a new lens, and a hefty price tag).
There are many new panoramic film cameras available in 2026, either as project files or as readymade small-scale productions. I spoke about four in last month’s newsletter (analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…). But WideluxX is not a 3D-printed body; nor is it a modern camera design made with LiDAR, ultrasonic motors, and new plastics. WideluxX is a complete remake of an all-metal mechanical film camera from the 1980s (with the parent designs dating back to the 1950s).
Despite the challenge of rebuilding this fully mechanical camera from scratch in an age when most devices are powered by microchips that simulate spring-wound delays and flip toggles with five-cent microchips, the project appears squarely on time. Last summer, I attended a talk by Charys Schuler, a WideluxX project co-founder, who promised a prototype by Q4 2025 — which the team indeed showcased in October the same year (analog.cafe/comments/f6jv). In today’s video, Jeff and Suzan Bridges (who co-founded WideluxX from California) unbox those prototypes.
Learn more about this camera, the team behind it, and the history of the project in last summer’s member newsletter: analog.cafe/r/widelux-fake….
Dmitri edited on Mar 3, ‘26