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.
Myriad will let you scan negatives up to 6x9 in dimensions and keep your film flat with no more than 0.4mm variance (however, it may have trouble with exceptionally curly film). The holder is made from premium plastics that are precision laser-cut, which melts the material in the process, leaving it perfectly smooth. The finely-textured diffuser panel ensures there are no Newton rings. The adjustable film guides let you switch easily from one film size to another. More info: cutasunda.com/resources.ht…
I’ll add a couple more images and scan samples to this thread shortly. 🧵
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.
One thing’s for certain is that the demand for film is now reaching a critical mass — enough to encourage well-resourced businesses to enter the market and attempt to compete with the likes of Ilford, Kodak, and Fujifilm.
Light Lens Lab was founded in 2018 by Mr. Zhou in Shangrao, China, “dedicated to optical research, development, and manufacturing of high-quality photographic equipment.”
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.
While I don’t personally use external meters frequently (typically, it’s a built-in meter or the Sunny 16 rule: analog.cafe/r/master-the-s…), this device seems very useful for film (movie) production and photography metering when you want to reassurances or calculations involving flash.
This is Matt Bechberger’s (Reveni Labs’ owner) fifth Kickstarter project. It reached 20% of the funding goal in just a few minutes after going live at 9 AM PST. Given it reaches 100% in the next 30 days (it will), LUMO will go into production this March and ship later this year.
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.
The digital sensor arms Evo with a top shutter speed of 1/8000s, ISO sensitivity of 100 to 1600, white balance controls, and 10 × 10 × 6 effects.
To take advantage of the above specs, you’ll need to insert a memory card and use the camera’s widest setting with its 16mm full-frame equivalent lens. That’s wide!
If the lens took photos directly on film, its true focal length would be 6.5mm, but with the camera’s ⅓” sensor, it’s about 100mm.
The autofocus (w/ face recognition) works between 10cm-∞.
Alas, there’s no viewfinder, so you’d have to compose using the built-in 3.5” display.
“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…
Also, there were rumours online that Ferrania was going out of business. But it looks like *they are not,* although they have been difficult to reach recently, the website was down for some time, and their film stock is low. Eventually, someone from Ferrania (it’s a city; look it up!) came back with the good news: the company is still active.
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:
x = (1/25) × (300 — x)
…Where “x” is the amount of developer needed.
The answer is 11.54ml of developer, which leaves us with 300 — 11.54 = 288.46ml of water. To check the answer, we can divide 288.46 by 11.54, which gives us 25 (one part developer, 25 parts water). This answer should be rounded to the more practical 290ml and 12ml, or it can be converted to 10oz and 12ml for the US/UK beakers.
(Note that the rounding should ideally differ for ounces and millilitres, and it may be prudent to round the concentrate volume up.)
Chemical Dilution Calculator does all of the above. It also automatically switches default measurement units based on your location and lets you see the precise measurements if needed.
The Chemical Dilution Calculator is part of the Chem Log app. To use it, launch this page: analog.cafe/app/chem-log, and click the purple “Dilution Calculator” button.
I’ve added free trials to the GOLD subscriber-only apps and articles on Analog.Cafe to help you decide whether a membership is worth the commitment.
You can try Chem Log (analog.cafe/app/chem-log), Film Price Trends (analog.cafe/app/film-price…), and Bulk Roll Calculator (analog.cafe/app/bulk-roll-…) for 7 days with no limits and no credit card. On top of that, you can try all of the website features and member-only articles, like the latest, “Pushing Ilford HP5+ to ISO 100,000” (analog.cafe/r/pushing-ilfo…), for 14 days with a card. I will remind you a week before the trial runs out.
Memberships helped keep Analog.Cafe ad-free and 97% free for thousands of readers from 201 countries in 2024. Thank you all who have, are currently, or are considering becoming GOLD members in 2025. Your support means a lot to this resource and its full-time staff of one!
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).
I did find a video by Analogue Amsterdam, where a short clip featured a physical (dummy model?) of the camera in their customers’ hands: youtube.com/watch?v=SflI-y…
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).
- It takes 4x5 film holders and Lomo Graflock 4x5.
- It can take side-by-side exposures for panoramic exposures.
- It can make shift exposures.
- It takes gel filters.
- It can switch focal lengths from 35mm to 135mm in 20mm increments.
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.
The camera in the photo is an example of a product most labs won’t accept (thanks to Fujifilm’s statement, aparently sent to their minilab machine owners). It’s possible that some technicians may be discouraged from processing any product the brand which they do not recognize.
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
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