Film Photography News — June 2026 Recap

☞ This is the 87th 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).

TL;DR: Unboxing the new Kodak Charmera Millennium Ed., an updated Polaroid Go, the Lomography Fisheye, two podcasts, and film Q debuts as a 1-click high-def film inversion tool.

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In this newsletter: Rethinking film inversions with film Q. Unboxing Kodak Charmera, Millennium Ed. A new Polaroid Go. Lomography Fisheye 2. I was on Photowalk Talk Podcast! Lifetime GOLD membership giveaway. Download and print this newsletter. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Rethinking film inversions with film Q.

I’ve been working on this update for six months.

film Q is a web app that inverts film negatives with just one button on virtually all internet-connected devices.

The new update makes it easier to use (you no longer need a Dropbox subscription) and adds other improvements to the experience.

You can listen to Daren and I get nerdy about film inversions on Analog.Cafe Podcast. We talk about the current options (Silverfast, VueScan, Negative Lab Pro, and others) and why they didn’t work for me.

film Q is designed to demystify and improve the film inversion process. It uses a simple technique (explained here) and includes a colour-correction guide to give you more control over your film’s colours using any image editor of your choice.

I’ve been using this inversion process — invert everything in one go, then work on the best images individually — for five years. Most of what you see on this website was scanned and edited this way. Of course, we all have workflows that best suit our creative needs, which is why I spent so much time making this app and the process accessible to more folks.

film Q is free for all GOLD subscribers. The membership is $5/mo and includes all articles, apps, and website features.

I hope that you give it a try and let me know what you think!

Unboxing Kodak Charmera, Millennium Ed.

RETO Project, a company whose products, like the Snapic A1, frequent pages of this blog, has recently released an update to one of TIME Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2025” — Kodak Charmera — a tiny, lo-fi keychain digicam that comes in a blind box.

This month, I got to peek inside one of those boxes and test the little gadget with a few of my friends on a trip to the mountains.

This camera is incredibly small and loads of fun, but it is the opposite of a high-definition device. It comes with wacky frames and effects, cute sounds, and a simple-to-use interface. The creative assignment is to lean into imperfections and the lack of technical resolution. Which is what I did. What do you think of this camera?

You can read the full review of the new Kodak Charmera here.

A new Polaroid Go.

Polaroid Go is the smallest instant film camera and format in the world. But as a new product, it is still a work in progress. Its earlier upgrade focused on improving the exposure, with a tune-up that made the photos less likely to be underexposed. The new version adds a more powerful flash and lens/aperture upgrades that many users say add a great deal of sharpness to the photos.

I haven’t tested the third-gen yet, but I’ve heard great things.

If you feel like you could use an upgrade or try this tiny format for the first time (which, unlike Instax, lets you make emulsion lifts), you can get one here.

You can also learn more about the specs of this new camera, or see my review of the Leica Sofort I, which uses Instax, has more features, and is the cheapest camera you can buy from this brand.

Lomography Fisheye 2.

I like wide-angle lenses. With a shorter focal length, there’s more that could fit in a frame; these lenses can be more compact, and they keep more things in focus, so they’re faster to shoot.

When they are extremely wide, like the Lomography Fisheye 2’s 10mm, they also produce wild distortions that may remind some readers of music and skateboarding videos from the early 2000s.

Lomography’s latest upgrade to their popular Fisheye camera features a built-in flash, unlimited double exposures, a detachable viewfinder, and an f8 fixed aperture, which lets in more light than most lenses of the type, thanks to its short focal length (which makes focusing easier due to its wide depth of field).

Read the full list of specs and the announcement notes here or find the camera on Lomography’s website.

I was on Photowalk Talk Podcast!

I was invited to the Photowalk Talk Podcast this week with Martin and Sandeep, both of whom have been shooting film for a long time and are supporters of the #BelieveInFilm community.

We chatted about cameras (including our favourites), the well-being and sustainability of the industry that makes film for them, and how everything is different now from the analogue heydays pre-2010s.

I also got to talk about this website, Analog.Cafe, why I publish certain kinds of articles, how (and why) it makes money, apps, and its future plans.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Overcast.

Lifetime GOLD membership giveaway.

In celebration of the 200th year of photography (1826-2026), I’m giving away FOREVER-FREE lifetime passes for Analog.Cafe GOLD memberships!

There are 12 of them, announced monthly in this email — throughout 2026 only.

This month’s winner of a lifetime GOLD membership on Analog.Cafe is:

Maggie 🎉🥳

Congrats to you! I’ve applied a perpetual 100% discount to your account so you can enjoy all the Analog.Cafe features for $0/mo going forward.

GOLD memberships include access to web apps for negative inversion and chemical logging, all articles on this website in printable PDF format, and exclusive film photography content.

You, the reader, can also win this prize. To enter, you just need to be an existing member or sign up!

Download and print this newsletter.

GOLD members can download this newsletter as a high-resolution PDF file. Open this newsletter in your browser and click the “Download PDF” button at the top.

Hope you found this email a helpful and fun read. Feel free to add a comment or reach out anytime. 👋