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.
Lomography has updated its DigitaLIZA Scanning Kits.
The new DigitaLIZA+ and DigitaLIZA Max modular scanning setups allow phone or camera scanning for multiple roll formats: 35mm, 120, 110, and 127. Medium format scans can be as large as 6×7.
The new backlight included in both kits features CRI 97, which means it emits 97% of wavelengths compared to incandescent light bulbs. Keeping this number as high as possible is crucial for getting accurate colours out of your negatives. Plus, you can use your own backlight instead if you’d prefer.
Both kits use magnets to keep the film flat, whereas the Max includes a phone stand as an additional component.
film Q User Guide is now public, while the app is still in private beta.
film Q is a new app that inverts film negatives on the Analog.Cafe website without the need to install any software. It connects to your Dropbox account and processes your files in the cloud.
This app will have several advantages over traditional film inversion apps, such as hands-off batch processing, zero resource usage, and an open and consistent inversion algorithm.
My goal with this app is to show you exactly what the inversion software does so that there are no unanswered questions about your exposure, film development quality, or the impact of your software on the image.
It’s the one that got away! They look very nice but seem to be quite rare lately. I will give it a try and review once I get a chance. Thank you for stopping by!
Thank you for taking the time to send me your feedback, Rafael!
I’ll definitely consider making more courses for the tools you mentioned.
I’m assuming that your comment refers to this guide: analog.cafe/r/how-to-edit-…. While it uses Photoshop for all of the examples, I believe the skills are transferrable to any image editing application that would allow you to create layers. Hope that helps.
I’d also like to mention this announcement — analog.cafe/r/how-to-edit-… — where I introduce a new film inversion tool. Most of my energy is currently directed at building that app, but once that’s complete, I’m hoping to produce more courses, and I’ll ask around what everyone wants so they’re better tailored to the community.
I appreciate this course a lot, but I believe that using Photoshop is not the reality of most photographers, as most of us are using tools like Lightroom, NLP, Fiomonat converter, etc. — a course on NLP would be formidable! Thanks!
Lomography released a development tank that makes loading film easier.
The fiddliest task of developing film is feeding it onto reels. Reels arrange it so that there’s spacing/no contact across the entire strip. This allows water and chemicals to flow freely across the entire surface, but it has to be done in darkness.
However, loading film onto reels can be difficult. Everything needs to be done by feel. Your hands are confined to a small space that can get warm quickly. As your hands get warm, the sweat makes the job harder. Films with a thin base, like Lomo 800, can be very frustrating to mount in these cases.
Lomography’s solution is a modular film loader and processing box. A core where you place your film roll is inserted into a plastic “doughnut” piece. You then wind the film from your roll into the “doughnut,” which houses the reels, remove the core with your empty canister and pour chems into the “doughnut.”
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