Film Photography News — April 2025 Recap

☞ This is the 73rd monthly Analog.Cafe Newsletter with the latest film photography lore. Sign up to get it via email on the last Tuesday of every month (it’s free).

What’s new?

The new Polaroid Flip instant film camera makes its debut, Fujifilm announces price hikes, I interview Sissi Lu about her DO NOT X-RAY pouch, Bad Film Simulator and cannabis-based film developers exist, a new article series about redscaling/bluescaling/greenscaling colour film, spring photo dump, and software updates to Analog.Cafe’s negative inversion tool — film Q.

Plus, ORWO may be releasing multiple new films this year.

💛 GOLD members get to invert 12 GiB of film negatives every month with film Q, learn how to get rare and unusual colours on film by bluescaling Lomochrome Turquoise and greenscaling Aerochrome, and view my spring photo dump.

🎁 Try GOLD free for 14 days! In this newsletter: What’s new? Redscale, greenscale, bluescale. Sissi Lu’s DO NOT X-RAY. Polaroid Flip. ORWO’s upcoming films of 2025. Fujifilm announces film price hikes. Bad Film Simulator. How to develop film in cannabis. Spring photo dump. App updates. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Redscale, greenscale, bluescale.

You won’t see much green in photos taken with Aerochrome — until you greenscale it. This colour-infrared emulsion, developed for the US military in the 1940s, glows red in response to infrared light, especially when it’s reflected from green plant leaves.

Kodak Aerochrome costs hundreds of dollars per roll because it’s the only colour infrared film, and it’s been discontinued since 2009. It’s difficult to shoot, as it has a very narrow dynamic range and captures the invisible light (which can be hard to predict). But the challenging aspects of the experience can make successful results feel more special, and the colours are out of this world.

Still, every photo shot on this film and published online will roughly look the same: red or pink foliage and blue for most other things.

Now, what if I told you there’s another set of colours locked inside this Aerochrome that no one saw (until now)?

Greenscaling Aerochrome produces green-dominant images with infrared highlights (in red). To my knowledge, this method has not been previously attempted or documented until I tried it this month.

The process of greenscaling is the same as redscaling any colour film, except that you’ll need a filter and specific exposure settings to get it right.

You can read about the process, view more greenscaled photos, and find the exposure tips for doing it yourself in this month’s premium article: ‘Greenscaling’ Aerochrome.

By the way, bluescaling is also a thing that can be done if you flip your roll of Lomochrome Turquoise. This is the same as redscaling your typical colour film or greenscaling Aerochrome, except without a filter, within a particular exposure range, and with some editing in post. See the bluescaled photos and learn how to do it yourself in this month’s other premium article: ‘Bluescaling’ Lomochrome Turquoise.

Sissi Lu’s DO NOT X-RAY.

This week, I interviewed Sissi Lu about her new product that seems to be flying off the shelves: DO NOT X-RAY film pouches. I asked Sissi about her minimal design that seems to focus on language and respect, and its story from a solution to a personal need to something you can now buy at most shops in the US/Canada.

Polaroid Flip.

This month, Polaroid announced a brand new film camera that seems to be their first remake of the iconic 600-series cameras.

If you know Polaroid, you may be familiar with their current Go and I-Type cameras: the Now and the I-2. The Go and the Now are entry-level models, costing less than $200, whereas the I-2 is nearly $600. So, where does the Flip fit?

Costing just under $200, the Flip is Polaroid’s new mid-tier camera that promises to take better-looking photos than the Now. But the way it would do that is largely thanks to the forty-year-old retro technology behind the lens.

Instead of Lidar, which seems to be the standard on many new cameras these days, Polaroid Flip uses sonar to measure the distance to your subject. And to set the focus, it dials in one out of four corrective lens elements, similarly to how Polaroid 600 would — this sets one of the four distances of sharp focus (this may give results less sharp than your SX-70 or the I-2 but sharper than Now, which has just two lenses, or Go that does not focus).

I found those choices of technology fascinating, particularly the sonar, which may’ve cost them more than the fairly standard Lidar chips. Daren and I discussed this in a brand new podcast episode, which we hope to publish soon.

ORWO’s upcoming films of 2025.

Last month, I wrote about ORWO’s upcoming ISO 200 colour film. I said that I’ll update you if I hear anything back from the company about the financial side of their business. Well, I heard back.

ORWO responded, saying:

Unfortunately, they did not respond to my follow-up questions, so I can’t say what’s in store for 2025 from ORWO. Still, it’s great to see them investing time, money, and effort into an industry that’s now recognized as a cultural heritage in Germany.

Every year, we’re reminded that we can’t take film photography for granted. Along with innovation, there are price hikes and discontinuations, and then the new US tariffs are putting additional strain on every part of the global network of manufacturers and photographers. Will our craft survive another year? — Most definitely. But the more options we have, the better.

Fujifilm announces film price hikes.

The price increases on film and Fujifilm disposable cameras range between 27% and 52% (more info).

Of course, these are the cost increases Fujifilm imposes on stores and distributors, which all operate under different circumstances and margins. This is to say that the actual dollar amount we’ll be paying for Fujifilm 400, Velvia, and Provia may not change for a while and increase by some amount which may or may not fall within the range above.

To understand what an actual fair price for film should be right now, check out Film Price Tracker, a web app that tracks consumer prices for the most popular films since 2018.

Bad Film Simulator.

April 1st was April Fools’ Day, which sometimes delivers OK jokes on the Internet. One of them, according to PetaPixel, is an app I built a little while back called Bad Film Simulator.

Bad Film Simulator does things to your photos to simulate some of the worst things that can happen to film photographers. Give it a try.

How to develop film in cannabis.

Speaking of jokes, this one is not. April 20th was another non-statutory holiday, which I felt was an appropriate time to share my recipe and results after developing Ilford HP5+ in a variety of natural and pharmaceutical ingredients, including cannabis.

Spring photo dump.

I took a lot of photos I liked this April and I shared them all with the GOLD subscribers this Friday. Here’s a sample of what I’ve seen happening in my neighbourhood through some of my favourite film cameras of all time: Voigtländer Vitessa A, the F2, and the FM2.

See this article for more photos.

App updates.

film Q, a web app I built for inverting film negatives in batches, got a few updates this month. It should now be easier and faster to use with fewer issues when inverting negatives made with dedicated film scanners. See the v1.0.0-beta.6 release docs for more info.

Film Price Trends has also got an update, making it easier to find average film stock prices, and there’s a new “Apps” button on the homepage.