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).
Well, the “yet another film emulsion” could lead to think that there are lots of them. Apart from Kodak, Ilford and Foma, most nice film boxes in the market are rebranded Kentmere (Ilford) or Foma. Sometimes some Agfa film for special purposes (the regular Agfa APX film itself is Kentmere since years ago). A truly new BW emulsion, specially if it is T-grain is something we haven’t seen in a while.
The other point that you missed is the anti-halation layer. LLL made very clear that this is only for the tests they are doing currently. The film that would reach the markets would have one.
Other than that, yes, LLL is showing ambition here. And you pointed correctly the reason: film production is increasing due to a higher demand. Something very unexpected only 10 years ago!
Update: Michael got back to me with corrections and additional info about handling curled film:
“Myriad handles flat and moderately curved films very well indeed. Although very badly curved films may not feed through it, you can simply remove the top panel and lay the negatives directly onto the diffuser, then replace the top panel. This allows them to be digitised as normal. It’s a workaround, but effective, and mentioned in the documentation.”
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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…
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:
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Analogue’s product would be competing with some of today’s most prominent camera manufacturers, including MiNT and their Rollei 35AF (analog.cafe/r/rollei-35af-…) and the Pentax 17. MiNT has been making new cameras for years and selling refurbished/modified Polaroid cameras for even longer. Pentax is a household name when it comes to photography; both MiNT and Pentax cameras are also significantly more expensive than the expected price of aF-1.
The project met some skepticism on Reddit (reddit.com/r/AnalogCommuni…), which is understandable, given the recent controversy surrounding expensive yet underwhelming cameras like Nana (analog.cafe/comments/brpr).
Ralph Tilon (the co-founder of Analogue) responded to the above skepticism on Reddit by establishing his team’s credentials as designers/product developers and explaining that they would be working with a manufacturer “that produced millions of quality cameras throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.” He added that they are aware of the self-imposed unusually tight deadline: less than six months to deliver the aF-1.
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).
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).
Dmitri edited on Feb 2, ‘25
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Dmitri edited on Jan 31, ‘25
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