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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
This clever lens design, built by Omnar (omnarlenses.com/our-story/), uses machined metal components to realize a modified formula for glass elements from the highly-regarded Yashica T* point-and-shoot cameras (like analog.cafe/r/yashica-t2-f… and…
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…
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…
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.
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