Film Photography News — June 2025 Recap

☞ This is the 75th 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?

There are 271 film varieties to choose from, one up from last month. But it’s not because of Leica’s first 35mm film product (despite being a pioneer of the format for the past 100 years) or Harman’s Red in 120 — both announced in June. It’s Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone.

CineStill teases several new products, set to launch this summer. Light Lens Lab shares samples of their soon-to-ship black-and-white emulsion, along with very ambitious goals. Meanwhile, Kodak ditches remjet from their Vision 3 films, throwing CineStill’s halation products into question.

Omnar announces Bertle 50mm 𝒇2 MC FLB, and Jollylook makes affordable no-batteries-needed Instax film backs for Mamiya RB67/RZ67 MF cameras.

💛 GOLD members get to read, download, and print the internet’s most complete “Guide to Film Photography,” invert film negatives online with film Q, and, sometimes, win free film!

🎁 Try GOLD free for 14 days! In this newsletter: What’s new? Lecia’s first 135 film, Monopan 50. Harman Red in 120. Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone. FREE film! 🎉 Upcoming film launches. No more remjet and bulk rolls of cine Kodak Portra 400? Bertle 50mm 𝒇2 MC FLB. Jollylook’s Instax film backs for medium format cameras. The Analog.Cafe Podcast. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

“A Beginner’s Guide to Film Photography” is the internet’s most complete page on the topic, and it’s also available as a 73-page, printable PDF book.

Written for photographers of all skill levels living in a world vastly different from the heydays of analogue cameras. It covers all major aspects of shooting film in 2025 (nearly 200 years after the first photograph was taken!), including the history 1826~2026, a comprehensive guide to choosing cameras, film, and labs, photography basics (like loading film and exposure) with sources to learn more, primers to advanced techniques (like developing film and maintaining vintage gear), and practical guides for making smarter film and camera purchases.

Read it here.

Lecia’s first 135 film, Monopan 50.

35mm film was designed for movie cameras. But its smaller size (compared to the standard format of the time, medium format) and convenient sprocket holes made camera makers like Oskar Barnack realize its potential for still cameras.

Leica I, released by Oskar in 1925, popularized the format, turning it into an industry of its own. But despite that history, Leica had never sold 35mm film — until now.

Leica could not keep this film a secret, which leaked ahead of their announcement. It’s safe to say that if they built a film factory, we’d know that also. Instead (of building a factory), Leica is rumoured to sell a version of Adox HR-50, an infrared-sensitive high-resolution black-and-white film.

Harman Red in 120.

Harman (the company that makes films like Ilford XP2 Super and Harman Phoenix) teased and subsequently released their Red film in medium format.

Red is a redscaled version of the Phoenix emulsion. Regular Analog.Cafe readers know that it’s not too difficult to redscale any colour film at home, including Lomochrome Turquoise and Kodak Aerochrome for special non-redscale colour palettes.

Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone.

Earlier this month, I built a page that transforms this Wikipedia article into a searchable, sortable list of photographic films that are currently available for sale.

I built that page while distinctly remembering that it listed 270 film stocks in early June — but has recently changed to 271! So, what is it?

The Leica film won’t be available until August, and Harman had only added a new format to their existing Red stock (thus, neither of those films could increment the total number of films available for sale).

So I dug into the recent changes and found that Ilford Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone was recently added to the list.

Ilford Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone is a product by the Swiss Ilford brand (which had split from the UK’s Harman following bankruptcy; the Swiss Ilford has the rights to the Ilford name while Harman licenses that name for black-and-white films, such as Ilford HP5+).

Confusingly, the Swiss Ilford, the company that owns the rights to the Ilford name, does not make film. Their other colour film, Ilford Ilfocolor 400, is most likely made by ORWO, whereas this new Cine Tone is speculated to be a Kodak Vision 3 500T (the hint is on the box, which states that the film is made in the US and packaged in China).

There isn’t much info about this film on the internet, but I managed to find a few samples on Australian Instagram that look like they may’ve been shot on the Vision 3 film; see posts by @mcvofilms and @kelchor.

So there you have it.

One last thing to add to this story is that Ilfocolor 400 Cine Tone has been around since 2023, so it’s not exactly new (just new to the list).

FREE film! 🎉

Cinema Shorts is hand-rolled Kodak Vision 3 film with remjet; it comes with a development manual in plastic-free and 100% recycled packaging.

This film features outstanding colour, resolution, and dynamic range. Developed for multimillion-dollar motion picture productions, Kodak Vision 3 is the gold standard for screen and still photography quality.

I have a limited hand-rolled batch of this film, branded with the new signature dark Cinema Shorts design, packed in threes with a signed, updated development guide & international lab list. It is a mix of the 50D and 500T speeds.

This film is not for sale, but I am giving away boxes of it every month to a lucky GOLD member until September 2025.

This month’s winner is @katahira! 🎉

Upcoming film launches.

Light Lens Lab shared their ambitious plans and a few samples of the black-and-white emulsion they are making in-house. The company hopes to release the film later this summer, with a potential follow-up for cinema cameras and peel-apart film.

Lucky Film, a Chinese manufacturer who promised colour film last year, may also come online soon, though there haven’t been any updates from them yet. We’ll see.

There are yet more film releases planned for this summer, including CineStill’s three new “mystery” products, which some photographers hope will be slide (colour-positive) film.

No more remjet and bulk rolls of cine Kodak Portra 400?

Speaking of CineStill, a company that made its name by finding a way to effectively remove the remjet layer from a Kodak Vision 3 film (and increase its sensitivity), Kodak is changing the key component that made it possible.

An announcement was leaked earlier this month, in which Kodak shared that their updated Vision 3 film design no longer requires a pre-bath during development.

This layer, or the lack of it in CineStill products, like the CineStill 800T, is what renders the memorable red halations around light sources that many photographers have come to love. But with Kodak no longer offering a removable anti-halation layer (since it’s now integrated deep within the film itself), CineStill may not have the options they previously did.

I’ve asked CineStill about this. Unfortunately, they haven’t responded (yet?).

CineStill does a lot more than pre-wash Vision 3 films behind the scenes (I have something to show you about this later this month), so I’m sure they’ll be OK.

But that’s not all. In addition to finally ridding of the remjet layer (which can make home development annoying) in their Vision 3 stocks, Kodak is also introducing Portra as a motion picture stock, labelled Kodak 5256. You can see video tests of this stock on Vimeo.

The new Portra’s “5256” label is recycled from an old Ektachrome stock. However, no one on the internet could identify exactly which Portra stock it is (currently, we have Portra 160, Portra 400, and Portra 800). But there are rumours that it’s the 400.

When I researched the above, I found a music video featuring Moses Sumney shot on the “yet-to-be-released and never-before-used motion picture stock, which is similar to a beloved professional still photography film.” More about the video and related info.

As you would imagine, Kodak Portra film on standard 400’ reels (for cinema cameras) can yield a lot of rolls of 135 film once bulk-loaded. This can mean big savings, but you can’t just be anybody.

Bertle 50mm 𝒇2 MC FLB.

Hamish (who runs a very popular photography blog, 35mmc) has been working with Chris (Skyllaney Opto-Mechanics) to rehouse vintage lenses in fancy all-metal, hand-finished, and hand-assembled (in the UK) housings.

Their latest creation is a complete reproduction of the 1934 Bertele 50mm 𝒇2 formula with advanced mechanical corrections. These corrections work by precisely (presumably non-linearly) controlling the position of lens elements to counter various aberrations.

The samples and the designs of the lens are very impressive. Have a look and read a more complete description of the lens here.

Jollylook’s Instax film backs for medium format cameras.

If you own a Mamiya RB67, you can now get a relatively inexpensive Instax Square back from JollyLook, based on their hand-crankable (no batteries needed) DIY unit I used to make the world’s first functional gingerbread camera.

The Analog.Cafe Podcast.

Last but not least, Daren and I started a podcast! You can listen to our pilot episode on Spotify (I’m working on getting it to more platforms in the near future). We chat about the new Polaroid Flip camera and what it means for the company and instant film photography.