Year-end sale on film, lenses, and cameras: 25% off + free shipping.
I’ve tested a lot of gear this year, some of which are listed at the Etsy shop I run alongside Analog.Cafe, FilmBase. Every piece is thoroughly tested, and everything has exhaustive descriptions and product images. Cameras, lenses, film, books, and more.
FilmBase is a tiny seller that consistently receives five-star ratings and great reviews. I try to ship things as fast as possible and package everything in either upcycled or plastic-free materials. US and Canada only, unfortunately.
A post by Norwich Camera on Threads showed a particularly sinister Temu product with a few short film ends fastened by tape. These could all be different films; the frames where the tape appears are 100% ruined.
Worse, one could hide a piece of film with remjet inside the canister and no remjet that sticks outside the canister — which could cause the lab to ruin its batch of chemicals and all the films that were developed in that batch. (Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to have been the case here).
Defective disposable cameras and badly respooled film rolls cause issues at film labs and ruin images.
Fujifilm issued a statement to labs about an offending product that may produce unusable images and even damage the minilab machines. There’s also a growing number of posts on social media by lab technicians sharing various problems with rolls and disposables.
Some of those posts suggest that Kodak’s recent rule-tightening about sales of Vision 3 film (see: analog.cafe/comments/up67) may be related to the rise of improper processing and respooling of that film.
The deffective products aren’t necessarily cheaper than quality film but they are always disappointing to the photographers who use them and are upsetting to the lab technicians who have to deal with the fallout while seeing their potential customers get discouraged about film altogether.
Smartflex, a lightweight 4x5 SLR, launched and reached its goal on Kickstarter within just a few days.
The camera weighs just over 2kg/4.4lb and uses a segmented mirror system to solve “the major issue of short flange distance lenses while ensuring no light leaks.” It uses a 5x5” horizontal ground-glass viewfinder. It’s also possible to use a mobile device with this camera (to film videos via an enormous LF lens) and Instax Wide film.
Various photos and images of the camera show its creator using it hand-held, which is certainly unique for this format. I wrote about this project earlier this year — see some of that footage here: analog.cafe/comments/kqi9
Oh wow — thank you so much Andrew! I was so disappointed I couldn’t set the date on this camera. I love everything about it and now that I can bi-pass that I’m even more thrilled about it. Just ordered the Z to compliment the x3.0
The search algorithm on Analog.Cafe has got a mini update this weekend (v3.26.27).
Finding a camera, film, or technique you’re looking for should now be easier. I’ve also fixed a few bugs that hid icons when you searched the comments.
It’s still not perfect (as search is a difficult problem to solve), but I think it’s better than the Google search API I used previously. While Google is very good at indexing pages, it doesn’t know how I organize this website and it can’t return rich data like the number of likes on a post.
Please let me know if you see any issues, as it’ll help me improve this part of the blog. Thanks!
There is one mistake in this article, which is all too common with younger photography hobbyists, especially from the US. It is using CineStill home kits as some kind of reference for C-41. In reality, this is a cheap-o copy of Tetenal´s press kit from the 1980´s, It is not operating at the standard temperature, nor is the time standard. No photofinishers are developing C-41 at 39°C (102°F) or for 3:30 minutes, as the standard is 37.8°C (100°F) for 3:15.
It’s cool that this lens can work with a digital medium format camera. Those sensors are a bit smaller than some of the giant image areas medium format film will have, but that’s with a tiny pancake lens.
There are compromises, of course. The Fuji GFX 100ii sample above shows vignetting and fairly significant softening in the corners. Hasselblad X1D’s sensor also adds a purple-blue cast. But if you want a lens this light and this compact with your big digital camera, this would be the limiting factor with almost any optics you’ll throw at it.
A $2.5K purchase of a lens made with elements sourced from a point-and-shoot camera makes the same sense as finding the legendary Minolta TC-1 (analog.cafe/r/minolta-tc-1…) 28mm G-Rokkor lens in a M-mount. When Minolta made those outstanding point-and-shoot cameras in the late ‘90s, they also produced a limited number of the same lenses for Leica rangefinders.
Some point-and-shoot cameras made in this period have incredible optics; however, those cameras can not last forever. My TC-1 bricked after two years of use, which wouldn’t happen with the lens alone. The reliability is a huge factor when it comes to these cameras, no matter how well they were built.
The folks at Omnar went a little further with their rehousing, however, making the Pantessa in a way that it projects an enormous ~60mm image circle — which means it can work with medium format digital cameras.
This shot was made with the lens adapted to Fuji GFX 100ii.
My favourite samples of this lens’ renderings from all the digital Leicas (amongst the M9s, the M10s, and the M11s) were made with the Monochrom body. I’m not used to digital sensor colours, even the premium ones, which is why I found black-and-white ones more compelling. Can’t articulate why just yet.
In any case, this lens appears to make sharp photos, as you’d expect from Zeiss optics that brought Yashica back out of the hole (a bit of history here: analog.cafe/r/yashica-t2-f…).
This black-and-white image seems to be pushing the lens’ limits: if you look closely, there’s some softness and swirl in the corners and a tiny bit of motion blur in the leaves. Yet the photo has a nice contrast and a great overall sharpness (there are a few things that can affect the sharpness of your photos with any lens — I wrote about it earlier here: analog.cafe/r/how-to-make-…).
Yashica’s T* point-and-shoot cameras were and are relatively affordable (thanks to the all-plastic bodies) and well-designed. Of course, the handling or reliability that you get with them won’t be the same as on a M-mount rangefinder.
There were a lot of sample images in the press package for this lens. Hamish mentioned that he’s even got some on 35mm film in his Leica that’s almost ready to scan. Some reminded me of my experience with my Yashica T2, particularly the optics render the out-of-focus foliage. But of course, digital sensors do render photos differently.
This photo was snapped on M11. I think it shows this lens’s bokeh and low-light performance pretty well.
Omnar Lenses was found by Hamish Gill of 35mmc.com and Chris Andreyo of Chris Andreyo of Skyllaney Opto-Mechanics.
Omnar has released a few rehoused lenses, taking vintage optics and improving their performance (as they have with Pantessa FLB) and handling. The handling bit seems to be driving the price of these ultra-low-run creations: practically everything is made of machined metal, hand-finished and hand-assembled in the UK.
Even the screw-on lens cap is made of metal.
The Pantessa weighs 108g (3.8oz) and protrudes 16.5mm (.65”) from the camera.
The Omnar 35mm f/3.5 Pantessa FLB is a premium Yashica T* lens rehousing for Leica M-mount, with an image circle large enough for Fuji GFX 100ii and Hasselblad X2D¹.
“The optical formula has been modified[…] to reposition the glass elements into a continually optimized state[…] we have designed the lens so the position of the optical block subtly moves within the housing as the aperture is adjusted[…] This design feature, which is entirely unique to our rehousing, is the key reason the Pantessa lens maintains such high optical performance and rangefinder accuracy across the entire 0.65m through Infinity RF coupled focus distance.” — Omnar.
The Omnar 35mm f/3.5 Pantessa FLB is available to pre-order off the Omnar Lenses website today for £1950 (~$2,435).
I use to shoot film back when was a lot younger. I have some very nice and expensive digital camera equipment now. Taking several hundred and even a couple thousand pics at sport events is the norm. You still have to get settings close to right but Photoshop can make an ugly picture look good. I’m totally disgusted with digital and AI. You have a very well enhanced fake picture by the time you finish editing. But that’s what sells. You no longer need to master the art of photography. All you need to do is master the art of Photoshop. Make one click on your preset and you’re for the most part done. I have a Minolta Maxxum 300SI. It’s not a fast camera but it’s fun to shoot. My father-in-law recently gave me a Canon AE-1 Program and an Olympus OM-1. I’m concentrating on refurbing the Canon right now. One thing that I did forget is buy 12 exposure film and not 36. Take 12 pics, send off to get developed, receive your pics, laugh and ask yourself, what was I thinking. Make adjustments, improvements and have fun. It’s a slower process than digital but more fun.
In this month’s article on the future of film, you mention the interest in vintage digicams. I just bought a CampSnap 103B digicam. Fixed focus, fixed aperture, wide angle lens, optical viewfinder, 8MP, NO on-camera controls beyond camera on-off and flash off-on-auto.
Why? I started back into analog photography earlier this year with my old Minolta 110 SLR. That was fun, but the all-in purchase/processing/shipping cost of $1.20/exposure was a choke point. I was strongly considering a refurbished Olympus Pen EE2 on Ebay (Japan-based refurbisher) to get that cost down to $0.45/ exposure when it occurred to me that I could get essentially the same user experience with the CampSnap camera, minus the costs of film. And without the worries of mechanical failure in a sixty year old camera that hardly anyone knows how to fix.
Update: it appears that consumer laser rangefinders are generally considered safe. Still, I can’t imagine pointing one of those things at someone’s eye during a portrait session, street, or event photography is a good idea.
Rveni Labs made a special holder that adapts a portable laser rangefinder device to film cameras.
Zone focusing isn’t difficult, but if you’d prefer to have *laser focus* with your manual film camera, there’s now an affordable way to do this. Reveni Labs, a Canadian startup that manufactures film camera accessories, made a holder with a mirror that lets you clip a small laser rangefinder tool, AquilaPro, on top of your camera.
AquilaPro, which sells for $30, is very accurate, down to 0.078”. There’s about an inch of discrepancy between the actual and measured distance due to the gap between the rangefinder and the mirror introduced by the holder — which won’t be consequential unless you’re shooting with an extremely narrow depth of field. The rangefinder’s limit is 98’ (30m), which can be assumed as an infinity mark (assuming reasonable DOF).
NONS CAMERA, a startup from Hong Kong/Shenzhen known for its Instax film cameras with high-quality lenses, is teasing the release of a new Hasselblad Instax Square back. youtube.com/shorts/3YK6AJM…
You may’ve noticed in the above video that the photographer mounts a filter on top of the lens and one more on top of the viewfinder. Here’s why it’s important:
The challenge of using the Instax Square format with Hasselblad is that the actual 6x6 frame of a medium format camera is 56mm × 56mm, which is smaller than Instax Square’s 62cm × 62cm by 3mm on each side, producing a black border.
NONS modified the projection focus via an additional lens element further back, which made it larger. This allowed them to “enlarge” Hasselblad photos to snuggly fit in an Instax Square.
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Val Karuskevich
Dmitri edited on May 5, ‘25
Samu Skogström
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don_monroe
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Rick Enochs
Dmitri edited on Dec 17, ‘24
Dmitri edited on Dec 17, ‘24
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Dmitri edited on Dec 13, ‘24