Film Photography News — Summary of May 2025

      ☞ This is the 74th edition of the monthly Analog.Cafe Newsletter, bringing you the latest in film photography news. Subscribe to receive it via email on the last Tuesday of each month (it’s free). What’s new? Ilford has rolled out Kentmere 200 black-and-white film and is now offering Delta 3200 in bulk rolls. RETO has introduced a new panoramic film camera, and Jolylook has produced a new hand-cranked Instax Wide back for DIY cameras. This month’s winner of 3 FREE Cinema Shorts 50D/500T rolls has been announced. Additionally, there are updates to the sole web-based fully-featured film inversion tool, guides on overexposure, and community submissions! 💛 GOLD members can invert 12 GiB of film negatives monthly with film Q, learn to achieve pastel colors on film, master light metering without a light meter, and read about unique analogue photography experiments. 🎁 Try GOLD for free for 14 days! In this newsletter: What’s new? RETO PANO. film Q v1.0.0-beta.100 Ilford Kentmere PAN 200. How to achieve pastel colors on film. Jollylook Instax Wide. Community submissions. Latest updates on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & gain premium features with GOLD memberships! Cinema Shorts is hand-rolled Kodak Vision 3 film with remjet, packaged in plastic-free and fully recycled materials, accompanied by a development manual. This film is renowned for its exceptional color, resolution, and dynamic range and is the gold standard for both screen and still photography quality, originally developed for multimillion-dollar motion picture productions. I have a limited hand-rolled supply of this film, featuring a new signature dark Cinema Shorts design, bundled in sets of three along with a signed, updated development guide and an international lab list. It is a blend of 50D and 500T speeds. This film is not for sale, but I’m giving away boxes each month to a lucky GOLD member until September 2025. This month’s winner is John Brand! 🎉 Shot with RETO PANO. Courtesy of RETO Project. RETO PANO. RETO has launched a new film camera that includes a panoramic mask switch, a fixed 1/100s shutter, and a fixed focus acrylic 22mm 𝒇9.5 lens. The camera is priced at only $35, and if it matches the quality of their previous Ektar H35N, it should be a great option. Discover more about this camera in yesterday’s announcement. film Q v1.0.0-beta.10 This May, I’ve updated film Q to allow for optional inversion of your film negatives into lossless 16-bit TIFF files. While the default high-quality JPEG files with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling provide substantial editorial flexibility already, this update could be beneficial for professional archival uses and specific post-scan/pre-print corrections. film Q is the only film inversion tool compatible with any device that has a web browser, doesn’t consume your computer’s memory/RAM to process large high-resolution scans (including TIFFs and camera RAW files), and features one-click batch processing with automated detection of new files. film Q does not add saturation, contrast, or sharpening nor does it apply LUTs to your scans. Instead, it delivers truly unaltered inversions. Check this guide to maximize the benefits of flat film scans. film Q is FREE for all Analog.Cafe GOLD members. Ilford Kentmere PAN 200. Ilford surprised its fans this month by introducing a new speed for its affordable black-and-white film line, the ISO 200 Kentmere PAN. The announcement was met with enthusiasm, supported by the fact that the final results often do not reflect the cost of the film and that the company has an excellent reputation in black-and-white film. Speaking of film prices, Ilford is now selling its fastest film, Delta 3200, in bulk rolls for approximately $230. According to the Bulk Roll Calculator, this yields 19 rolls of 36 exposures plus extras — about $12 per roll. That’s $9 less than the current average price for this film! Shot on Kodak Pro Image 100. No color grading. How to achieve pastel colors on film. Not all films can handle overexposure safely, and not every overexposed film frame will exhibit pastel colors. This article demonstrates how to achieve this effect. Jollylook Instax Wide. Jollylook has completed its lineup of hand-cranked instant film development devices with an Instax Wide back. If you find yourself constructing a camera from scratch — whether it’s a pinhole or a gingerbread camera with a sugar lens — these tools could prove particularly useful. Unlike standard film, they allow for quicker testing and iteration (though not particularly inexpensive). Several community submissions made it to Analog.C

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