Movies on 135🎞️, Film Tests & Download Analog.Cafe!

A Monthly Newsletter for GOLD Members

5 min read by Dmitri.
Published on November 21, 2025.

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I’ve made some changes to the website this month. One makes sharing GIFs a reality; the other turns every article into a high-quality PDF with custom formatting.

Though the GIF display may not be a huge deal, the big reveal is the purpose for their existence: a brand-new movie camera that’s in the works. The neat thing about it is that it can shoot videos on regular 35mm film you’d load into a still camera, producing images of better quality than on Super 8. Plus, it functions as a scanner.

You could even load it with the new Lucky film from China, which I compared directly to Kodak Gold the other day.

In this newsletter: Free film & Black Friday deals. Lucky C200 vs. Kodak Gold. Download and keep Analog.Cafe articles as preformatted PDFs. OKTO35 — a new movie camera in the works. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Free film & Black Friday deals.

If you aren’t yet a GOLD subscriber, here’s a little incentive for you: I’ve been giving away 3-packs to random winners — and you can be the next to get one!

All you need to do is subscribe and wait for an announcement in the next newsletter on December 30th, when the last draw for the current batch of hand-rolled films will take place!

Details.

In other news, a small Etsy shop I’ve been running for the past six years with a perfect five-star rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ will host a sales event from November 24 to December 2. Most of the cameras will be 30% off.

Lucky C200 vs. Kodak Gold.

Though some of you may not have yet heard of the Lucky film brand, they are actually a very large business in China. They are traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, have a staff of over 3,000 personnel, and own 21 companies.

Of course, not all of that is directed at film production. And yet, the part of the company that is dedicated to photochemistry has recently and swiftly resumed colour-negative film production. It was only last year that we found out the company plans to recreate their colour product; while still a few months behind their original (unofficial) goal of launching it in early 2025, Lucky C200 is now available to order.

You’d still have to import the film from China, as there’s no international distribution set up yet — but the price is right — and I’ve got some.

In this month’s member-exclusive post, I’m comparing the new Lucky C200 against the “gold standard” of affordable colour-negative film: Kodak Gold 200. Check it out.

Dedicated Lucky C200 film review coming soon!

Download and keep Analog.Cafe articles as preformatted PDFs.

Now that it’s the holiday season, you may find yourself offline more often than usual. It’s probably a good thing. Maybe you’ll turn off all your screens for a few days — even better. But should you like to keep shooting and learning about film photography, you can still do so during your digital detox with Analog.Cafe’s new feature — pre-formatted PDFs.

I’ve been thinking about ways to distribute the years of work that went into this blog beyond the wire for a while. It would be good for offline reading, preservation, readers’ ownership of the content, and paper-based viewing — which many photographers rightfully say is better than on a screen. Yet the web pages are very different from physical sheets; the layouts don’t easily translate, and so, I’ve been hand-stitching PDFs for select articles up until recently.

This month, however, I’ve managed to overcome the technical challenges of reformatting 700+ RTF articles and several gigabytes of high-resolution images across various layouts into easy-to-read magazine-style PDF articles:

You can now download and keep practically any article ever written on this blog as a pre-formatted two-column high-quality PDF!

Just look for a button under the title that says “Download PDF.” You can even download and print this newsletter.

There are some limits: 10 articles per month for most members or 100 articles for GOLD+ members.

This is a beta project; I look forward to receiving your feedback. Including the possibility of other formats. Would you like to download articles as EPUB for your e-reader? Let me know.

OKTO35 — a new movie camera in the works.

Last but not least, I’ve been in contact with the inventor of a movie camera that’s promised to lower the cost of filmmaking by 80% compared to Super 8 and open the door to shooting films previously inaccessible on the format, like Aerochrome and Adox CMS 20 II.

Not only will this camera shoot movies on standard 135 cartridges, but it will also feature advanced capabilities such as self-scanning, adjustable frame rates (up to 25fps), adjustable gate size (opening up an opportunity to produce images close to 16mm footage), and much more.

Read more and view exclusive footage from OKTO35 (still in development) here.

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That’s it for this month.

Thanks so much for your support!

— Dmitri.

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