The team behind the proposed Analogue AF-1 35mm compact camera unveiled late last year has told Kosmo Foto the camera is now unlikely to appear before November or December.
The camera had been promised for the summer, but Analogue’s Ralph Tilon said the project’s timeframe needed to be extended due to design issues, especially with the camera’s lens.
The Dutch brand, which runs film camera shops in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, are building the camera in China.
Tilon told Kosmo Foto via email: “We’re currently in between the prototyping and pre-manufacturing stage of the project. That specifically means that for most mechanical parts we’re already moving into pre-manufacturing but with the lens still need another round of prototyping.”
He added: “The biggest challenge so far has been the engineering of the Double Gauss lens and particularly the shutter and AF module of the lens. In ideation and planning we selected a shutter, that in a later stage turned out to be not powerful and durable enough. It turned out to be really hard to find a small shutter that was able to get to 1/1000th of a second. In the end we did find (a relatively) small one but we had to adjust the mounting parts and motor of that shutter to fit the aF-1 lens.”
The Analogue team now believe that they will be able to release the new camera “by the end of November or December”, Tilon said. The team is made up of nine people working on the camera’s design and development, spread across the Netherlands and China.
The camera was announced at the end of 2024 with a slick online marketing campaign which showed renders of the proposed camera but no physical models, nor any images captured on the proposed camera’s lens. It followed a series of Instagram videos hinting at the upcoming camera.
There was not one specific camera that drove us in terms of inspiration. Honestly, we have looked at dozens of cameras and used elements of many more – RALPH TILON
When the camera was announced, the Analogue aF-1 site also offered a place on the waiting list for the camera for €5, with an expected release date in the summer.
“Our communication before existed out of four videos on Instagram, the goal was to find a way to assess if the interest would be as good as we hoped it would be,” he told Kosmo Foto. “The fully refundable €5 reservation fee was added to get a bit of a commitment. It turned out that there where many people interested in our project because we rapidly achieved 2,500 reservations.”
Tilon did tell Kosmo Foto that the camera’s body – which according to the renders does resemble some of the Olympus Mju range – “is entirely new”.
“There was not one specific camera that drove us in terms of inspiration. Honestly, we have looked at dozens of cameras and used elements of many more. To just name a few: Olympus Mju series, Contax series, and Yashica T, as well as practical favourites like the Minolta Riva series and Pentax Espio series.
“Some components such as the shutter mentioned above already existed in some shape or form but we still had to adjust the shape, size and some components to fit our design,” he said.
Analogue will publish an update on the camera’s progress on their site on Friday (23 May) with further details about when certain milestones are expected to be met, he said.
“In our update on Friday, we will also share the follow-up with the reservations. Once the final prototype is ready in July, we’ll share the first photos taken with the aF-1. After this, all reservation holders will be asked whether they’d like to convert their reservation into an order. If not, the reservation fee will be refunded right away,” he said.
After the project was announced, there had been some speculation that the team might have chosen an overly ambitious project, given that they have not designed or launched a camera before. Tilon said: “There are a whole lot of factors that make us able to do this. Very experienced manufacturing partners, extensive in-house experience with product development, in-house design and 3D modelling staff and a great passion for analogue photography. Also, the ability to market and retail the product by ourselves really helps.”
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
