Polaroid film reacts to sun exposure by fading, which has long been considered its downside. But this disadvantage (common amongst most printed materials) can be used creatively to make fun designs that reveal themselves after a few days of exposure, while saving birds from hitting a window.
I made a short video to demonstrate how easy Sol Prints are, what they look like, and how does it feels to reveal them after all the time spent waiting for a result: youtube.com/shorts/tjlqrhC….
For more details on how this works and how to make one (or a few) Sol Prints yourself, see this article: analog.cafe/r/how-to-make-….
Given the response Sissi received, her simple, well-designed pouch has been a success — at least when it comes to her fans’ desire to have one. Eventually, she got overwhelmed by the number of orders and had Roberts Distribution step in to help.
“I used to make small batches of the pouches in multiple sizes, and I’d love to offer that again. But as this project grew into something bigger, I had to be mindful of what was realistic for a wider launch.”
“Since this pouch started as a personal need and has helped me so much in my own journey, I’m really hoping the pouch will be accessible wherever people need it, and I’m definitely open to expanding stockists based on community feedback and demand.” — Sissi Lu.
The only way to avoid having film exposed to X-rays is to ask.
Luggage gets X-rayed (some say with greater intensity), and lead-lined pouches you may’ve seen on sale may only cause trouble. Sissi’s design includes multiple languages, which may not always be necessary as many agents around the world will speak English, but it can’t hurt either. I’ve had a few language-caused misunderstandings that led to unwanted X-ray scans of my film stash.
“The original pouch design included just the language of the city I was flying into. But when I decided to introduce this product to a wider market, I asked both my friends and the online film community which countries they travelled to most often with film—and I ended up receiving over 30 different languages and dialects.
To keep the design clean and readable, I had to narrow it down to the seven most frequently mentioned destinations. But I didn’t want to leave any languages out, so I created a bonus travel card that comes with each pouch. It includes translations in 21 additional languages!”
“If you know me, you know I love things that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Inspired by an old Kodak label and tips from Tim Ryugo, I designed my own version. I didn’t expect anything of it, but it’s now become a little side business!”
Flying with film can be tricky since we have to ask busy and sometimes intimidating security agents to do extra work. Many people still don’t know about film and how X-rays can damage it. Sissi’s solution was to print an appealing label that clearly explained in the local language what’s inside and why it can’t go through the scanner:
“Asking for a hand check at airport security can feel overwhelming—for both travellers and agents—so I wanted to make the process as smooth and straightforward as possible.
To my surprise, the pouch and its design were actually really respected by the agents. It made travelling with film feel a lot more ‘official,’ and it took the pressure off having to explain myself at every checkpoint.”
Flying with film? DO NOT X-RAY — a new travel pouch by Sissi Lu may help.
Sissi Lu, a New York-based photographer, has just launched her DO NOT X-RAY Film Pouch product, available at most camera stores in the US and Canada, and directly from Sissi’s website: sissilu.com.
The pouches are designed to organize your film rolls/packs and communicate with the security agent at an airport where you’d like to have your film hand-checked in 27 languages.
Last year, Daren, Yvonne, and I proved that you can. We tried a whole range of unconventional developers, and our “Sativa Cannanol” mixture proved to be very effective for low-grain, high-quality results with Ilford HP5+.
This pot-based recipe has a development time of 420 seconds at 69℉ (no joke). We tested it with our wonderful model, Lily, who helped us build a chart of exposures used to determine its effective ISO.
You can find the instructions for developing your black-and-white film with “Sativa Cannanol” and other unusual mixtures here: analog.cafe/r/i-developed-….
Polaroid had included some sample scans in their promo materials. This is a very nice photo by Isadora Kosofsky.
If I were to guess about the quality of the lens, I’d say it’s sharper than Now but not as sharp as I-2. This guess is based on the technology that drives the plastic resin lens (2-step autofocus for Now, 4-step autofocus on Flip, and stepless on I-2) and the samples I’ve seen so far. I’ve only shot with Now.
I like how the new cameras look. Haven’t held one yet, but they appear more solid than the originals, at least based on what today’s Polaroid products are like. The colours are fun!
Polaroid Flip is a new film camera that uses classic tech to take better photos.
Those of us who grew up in the ‘90s may remember the old boxy Polaroid cameras like the Polaroid Sun 660. I lived in Moscow then, and we had one too. Polaroid Flip appears to be a modern reincarnation of those 600-series.
The Flip uses sonar and a 4-lens step focus just like my Sun 660. Polaroid’s earlier design, Polaroid Now, does not have that ability (later designs got 2-step autofocus).
I’m fascinated by Polaroid’s choice of sonar for autofocus, despite other tech like Lidar being more popular today. But the Flip also does some new things: film packs with a rechargeable battery, under/over exposure warning, a (presumably) more powerful flash, and Bluetooth connectivity with an app for manual control, double-exposures, etc.
Previously, I referred to the technique that sets the black-and-white points of an image to their respective maximum values as “histogram equalization.” That was incorrect. This technique should be called “histogram stretching” or “normalization.”
I’ve corrected all the articles and documentation references to use either “histogram stretching” or “normalization” when talking about this topic.
We’ve been fortunate to have the prices of colour film drop during the past year.
Film Price Trends, an app that analyzes data from nine retailers in North America, Europe, the UK, and Asia on dozens of popular film stocks since 2018, shows a clear decline in price for Fujifilm Velvia and Provia films: analog.cafe/app/film-price… and analog.cafe/r/colour-film-….
There are various reasons for this welcome change — from decreasing interest rates to increasing competition. I would not rule out that Fujifilm was trying to make good on its promise of improving production efficiency either.
The true price of film depends on a lot of things, and it’s not always intuitive. For example, Kosmo Foto Mono, a film reportedly made from Foma 100 stock, is cheaper here in Canada than the original Foma 100 film.
Still, it’s hard to imagine that the price of film will continue to decrease in the current market.
Fujifilm announced the first price hike on film of 2025.
Fujifilm, Kodak, and Ilford (Harman) announce film price increases roughly once, sometimes twice a year.
In their announcement (fujifilm.com/ffis/ja/news/…, previously shared by PetaPixel petapixel.com/2025/04/04/f… and DPReview), Fujifilm said they worked on improving their efficiency, but, unfortunately, the increasing price of raw materials still drove the prices up. It’s implied that they won’t be subsidizing their film manufacturing.
As a result, the film prices will go up 21-52% (the higher number applies to reversal films like Velvia and Provia).
ORWO Net AG is insolvent, but ORWO film production is apparently unaffected.
The ORWO brand has had a tumultuous history, with bankruptcies, company splits, false starts, and numerous failed businesses. And last week, ORWO Net AG became insolvent.
ORWO Net AG owns the name “ORWO” in Germany. It sells printed goods and operates a large photo lab. But it doesn’t make film.
We buy ORWO-branded film from FilmoTec GmbH, which is under shared ownership with InovisCoat — a company which manufactures film components for brands like Polaroid B.V., Adox, Bergger, Lomography (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORWO).
Film photography is now recognized as a cultural heritage in Germany and is on the path to UNESCO listing.
Silvergrain Classics, a German English-language film photography magazine, has just shared the news on their blog: silvergrainclassics.com/en….
“Analog photography has now been officially registered in the State Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. This has made it possible for the state to nominate analog photography for inclusion at the German federal level.”
This nomination and its advancement could mean several things for analogue photography, including greater recognition and perhaps further efforts and investments by German and European governments to preserve and advance this medium.
Yes, the majority of the app is written in TypeScript. It uses github.com/lovell/sharp. I think there are a lot of great tools in JavaScript land for computer vision, but maybe not as many code examples or theory explainers that go beyond resizing images for web servers. Some features are missing here and there, but the pieces written in other languages to fill the gap are a few and don’t need as much maintenance.
Overall, JavaScript seems like an ideal solution for this project. The worker, server, and client all use the same language, which is very convenient and easy to read. At least for someone so used to writing everything in JavaScript 😅
I am just curious. Was the app written in JavaScript? I was a scientific programmer for over 30 years in genetics research. I have written many image analysis algorithms (Java, C++), so I just wondered what it looks like in other languages. I understand if you do not want to share actual code; however, I wonder what challenges came up language-wise in your experience. Thanks for all you do! Bill
I wrote this guide four years ago after researching ways to personally take over the process that traditional scanning and film inversion apps obfuscate.
I needed to know how exactly the software affects the colours of my film to identify and control the visual differences between film stocks and measure the effects of my lenses, filters, and exposures.
Having learned a great deal about the transformative path of a negative with an orange mask to a digital colour image, I could confidently write film reviews where I measured and compared minute differences between film stocks (whereas others may’ve deferred to internet lore, marketing material, or inconsistent scanning workflows). I could also get more image data out of my scans and gain greater editing flexibility.
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Dmitri edited on Apr 21, ‘25
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Dmitri edited on Mar 25, ‘25
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