The Swing-Lens Returns
The swing-lens panoramic format renders a 126-degree field of view with a characteristic sweep across the frame — the WideluxX brings this back in a hand-built German revival
Week of 24 May 2026
A week with genuine news from across the analogue spectrum: a long-anticipated panoramic camera returns from the dead; Intrepid consolidates its position at the accessible end of large format; Kodak quietly makes available a film stock that has been shooting in Hollywood for several years; and a small Berlin engineering team announces pricing for a 35mm scanner that has drawn considerable attention in the film community. The analogue world is, by most measures, in rude health.
Film & Analogue
The Widelux Returns — As the WideluxX
The original Widelux, manufactured by Panon in Japan from 1958, was one of the most distinctive panoramic cameras ever made. Rather than using a fixed wide-angle lens, it employed a swing-lens mechanism — a 26mm lens that physically sweeps across the scene during exposure, while a slit behind it progressively exposes the film. The result is a 126-degree field of view across a frame twice the width of standard 35mm, with a characteristic curved-horizon distortion that became associated with a certain strain of 1960s and 70s street photography. Production ceased, the cameras aged, and parts became scarce. The Widelux became one of those objects that people talked about mostly in the past tense.
The WideluxX changes that. A small team has spent several years engineering a fully mechanical revival of the F8-era Widelux, built by hand in Germany, and first-run orders are now open. The key details:
Price: $4,400 USD / EUR 5,200 including VAT in Europe, plus shipping and duties
First run: 350 cameras, each personalised — not numbered but individually named
Timeline: first units ship in 6-8 months; the full first run completed within 12 months
Guarantee: full refund if the timeline is missed — an unusual and reassuring commitment for a project of this nature
Two-year warranty, with a stated intention to make repair manuals and parts available long-term
Mechanism: swing-lens, as per the original — the lens physically rotates through the scene, there is no electronic shutter, and the viewfinder remains, in the project's own words, "more of a suggestion"
YouTuber Peter McKinnon, who has been given access to the project, describes the result as convincing: "From everything I've seen, they nailed it." The price point is not casual — this is emphatically not a mass-market product — but for those drawn to the format's particular rendering, and who have been watching functional original Wideluxes command significant prices on the used market, it represents a credible proposition. The swing-lens panoramic format sits in a very specific niche between the convenience of digital panoramics and the committed strangeness of large format, and for that niche this is significant news.
Large format field photography rewards the deliberate approach demanded by the format — Intrepid's Mark IV range makes this accessible at prices well below traditional alternatives
Intrepid Mark IV — Large Format Consolidated
Intrepid Camera Co., the small UK manufacturer that has done more than any other single company to bring large format film photography within reach of non-specialist photographers, has updated its 8x10 lineup with the Mark IV generation. The Film Photography Podcast recently reviewed both the 8x10 Mark IV and the current 4x5 fifth-generation camera, returning a verdict of "solid two thumbs up" from working large format photographer Mat Marrash.
The current Intrepid lineup spans several formats and finishes:
4x5 Camera (5th generation) — GBP 380. The standard model, in natural finish, described by Intrepid as "a totally modern rethink of the traditional large format field camera"
4x5 Black Edition — GBP 410. Made primarily from high-quality 3D-printed parts with a sleek, uniform black finish
4x5 Hardwood Edition — GBP 560. Available in walnut, cherry or beech; the premium aesthetic option
5x7 Camera (current generation) — GBP 470. The intermediate format, portable despite the larger negative size
8x10 Camera (Mark IV) — GBP 590. At 2.8 kg, claimed as the lightest and most compact 8x10 film camera available
8x10 Black Edition MK4 — GBP 620. The 3D-printed black-finish variant of the 8x10
Intrepid also sells a Compact Enlarger (GBP 300) compatible with 35mm and 120, and an Enlarger Kit (GBP 300) that converts the 4x5 camera into a working darkroom enlarger — a neat vertical integration of their product range. For photographers who want to close the loop from exposure to print without investing in a separate enlarger, it is a practical solution. All of Intrepid's cameras are manufactured in their UK workshop, which matters for those who value provenance and repairability.
Kodak's Verita 200D joins a market well supplied with colour negative options — but the Hollywood pedigree and deliberately classical rendering set it apart from existing stocks
Kodak Verita 200D — From Hollywood to the Open Market
Eastman Kodak has formally announced the commercial availability of Verita 200D, a colour negative motion picture film stock that has, in fact, been shooting professionally for several years. The stock was developed in close collaboration with writer-director Sam Levinson and cinematographer Marcell Rev for HBO's Euphoria Season 3, where more than one million feet were exposed across 35mm and 65mm formats. The A24 production The Death of Robin Hood (directed by Michael Sarnoski, with Hugh Jackman) also used Verita 200D.
The character of the stock is positioned as deliberately classical: detailed highlights, high colour saturation, deep blacks, and warm natural skin tones. Kodak describes it as having "a shorter yet exceptionally rich dynamic range" compared with their VISION3 colour negative films, which is another way of saying it clips highlights and shadows more readily — a characteristic that tends to read on screen as a more analogue, less clinical look. The stock numbers are 5206 (35mm) and 7206 (16mm and 65mm).
Availability, at present, is through Kodak sales representatives as a specialty motion picture stock — this is not yet a product you can order from a film retailer in standard quantities. Whether it follows the path of earlier Kodak motion picture stocks into the still photography market, repackaged by companies such as CineStill, remains to be seen. The announcement confirms that Kodak continues to develop new emulsions, which is, in itself, reassuring news for the film community regardless of immediate accessibility.
CineStill — Own Films and a Growing Storefront
CineStill Film has, since its inception, occupied an interesting position in the analogue market. The company's founding proposition — removing the rem-jet backing layer from Kodak motion picture stocks to make them compatible with standard C-41 processing — produced the 800 Tungsten, which became one of the most widely used and recognisable film stocks in the contemporary analogue revival. That was followed by 50 Daylight (a fine-grain ISO 50 daylight-balanced colour negative) and more recently 400 Dynamic, a genuinely original emulsion developed by CineStill with manufacturing partners and explicitly not based on any motion picture stock. These three form the core of what CineStill actually makes.
What has expanded considerably is their retail operation. The CineStill storefront now lists a significant number of films produced by other manufacturers, sold as a convenience alongside the house range. Several are worth noting separately from the CineStill originals:
HARMAN Phoenix II 200 — made by HARMAN technology Ltd at their factory in Mobberley, Cheshire, UK. Phoenix II is the second generation of Harman's own colour negative film — the first colour emulsion manufactured entirely in-house at Mobberley from emulsion to cassette. Available in 35mm and 120. A Harman product, not a CineStill one.
HARMAN Red 125 — also from Harman Technology, listed on CineStill's site explicitly as "From Harman." A 125 ISO redscale colour negative, producing characteristic shifted reds and golds. Available in 35mm.
Kentmere Pan 200 — a new black-and-white stock from Kentmere, Harman's budget-focused sub-brand (same company as Ilford), manufactured at the Mobberley facility. Pan 200 joins the existing Pan 100 and Pan 400. Available in 35mm and 120.
Dubblefilm Bubblegum and Apollo — creative films from Dubblefilm, a Spanish company founded in 2017 producing colour-shifted emulsions. Bubblegum produces pink and purple-shifted tones; Apollo has a warm, vintage-shifted palette. These are Dubblefilm products retailed through CineStill, not CineStill originals.
None of this diminishes CineStill's own contribution — 800 Tungsten in particular remains a genuinely distinctive film that has shaped the look of a significant strand of contemporary analogue work. But the storefront model means that browsing the CineStill site requires some attention to provenance, especially when a Harman or Dubblefilm product sits alongside the house range without obvious differentiation in the presentation.
The Knokke Scanner — Pricing and Launch Details
A Berlin-based engineering startup called Soke has announced pricing and delivery timing for the Knokke, a 35mm film scanner that has drawn significant interest in the analogue community. The Knokke is being positioned as a modern successor to the kind of desktop roll-scanner workflow that the Pakon 135 once offered — fast, dedicated to 35mm, and oriented towards both individual users and small lab operations. Key specifications:
Resolution: 4,064 DPI
Dynamic range: 120 dB
Colour depth: 48-bit
Scan speed: a full roll in under five minutes
Output: JPEG, negative DNG export for RAW processing; no TWAIN driver, open-source driver architecture
Connectivity: USB-C 3.2
Software: Korova — proprietary but open-source, with per-frame or whole-roll dust removal customisation
Panoramic format support: handles XPan and Widelux frame sizes — a notable capability given the WideluxX announcement this same week
Repairability: stated commitment to making repair manuals and spare parts available
Pricing is EUR 999 for the crowdfunding campaign price, rising to EUR 1,599 at retail. The crowdfunding launch was set for early 2026 — a Reddit thread this week confirmed the pricing and generated considerable discussion. There is no infrared dust removal, which will be a consideration for colour negative work, though the software-based dust handling may compensate adequately for many use cases. The lack of slide or alternative format support (mounted slides, APS, etc.) is noted, though 35mm roll film remains the primary format for most active film shooters. At EUR 999 campaign price, the Knokke is substantially cheaper than a used Noritsu or Fuji scanner, and considerably more approachable than a dedicated flatbed like the Epson V800. It bears watching.
Lomography — LomoChrome Classicolor in a Reloadable Camera
Lomography has released a Simple Use Reloadable Film Camera preloaded with LomoChrome Classicolor, at a price of $27.90. LomoChrome Classicolor is an ISO 200 colour negative film launched by Lomography in late 2025, designed to render colours with a warm, vintage-shifted palette rather than accurate reproduction. The Simple Use camera format — which looks and handles like a classic disposable camera but can be reloaded after each roll — has a 31mm fixed lens at f/9, a single shutter speed of 1/120s, and a built-in flash. It accepts colour gel filters and is compatible with Lomography's Aqua Underwater Case.
As a proposition, it sits at the very accessible end of the analogue market — an entry point for those curious about film, packaged around a film stock with a distinctive and immediately pleasing aesthetic. At under $30 including 27 exposures of a genuinely characterful emulsion, it is hard to argue with as an introduction.
Also This Week
Gear, Glass & Light
The week has been relatively quiet on the digital gear front. Fujifilm continues to keep its camera announcement cards close, with no new bodies confirmed. The most substantial rumour circulating is an OM System OM-3 — likely to slot between the OM-5 and OM-1 Mark II in the range, with an emphasis on compact dimensions and in-body stabilisation — though OM Digital Solutions has not confirmed a timeline. Leica's pipeline (previously noted with the SL3-P on watch) remains on track for a late spring or early summer announcement.
The Photographic Arts
With Photo London concluded last weekend, the exhibition calendar is catching its breath before the summer festival season begins. Catherine Opie's retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery closes next Saturday, 31 May — a final week for those who have not yet seen it. The Rencontres d'Arles programme (6 July to 4 October) continues to attract international attention, with the full artist list now confirmed and event tickets available through the Arles website
Looking Ahead
The Knokke crowdfunding campaign is the most immediately watchable development for the film community — pricing is confirmed and the launch is imminent. WideluxX first-run orders are open now for those with EUR 5,200 to hand and a tolerance for a 6-8 month wait. On the digital side, the Leica SL3-P remains the near-term announcement most worth watching. Next week's Photography Weekly returns to Gear, Glass & Light — with Leica, OM System and potential Fujifilm movement all in the frame.
