The team behind the WideluxX panoramic camera – a revived version of the famous Widelux – unveiled the camera’s prototype at an event in the US.
WideluxX company owners Jeff and Susan Bridges, Charys Schuler, and Marwan El Mozayen (who publish the analogue photography magazine Silvergrain Classics) introduced themselves, the project, and their prototype No 0001 at the annual convention of the International Association of Panoramic Photographers (IAPP) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The camera, which has been built in Wetzlar, Germany, is based on the Panon Widelux F8, a Japanese-built panoramic camera, released in 1988 and produced until 2000.
Jeff Bridges, the actor who has starred in films such as ‘The Big Lebowski’, ‘Tron’, ‘True Grit’ and ‘Iron Man’, has been a longtime panoramic shooter after receiving a Widelux from his wife. He has produced two books of photography using Widelux cameras.
Jeff and Susan Bridges said in a statement: “Twenty years ago, the Widelux factory burned down, so we decided that rather than letting our favourite camera die, we’d bring her back to life. We’re keeping it old school, it’s a film camera handmade in Germany, built to last generations.”
Marwan El Mozayen and Charys Schuler added: “There will be many small improvements, but its DNA is still the [Panon Widelux] F8. We see ourselves as a bridge between the history and the future of analogue photography — it’s about the art and craft of camera manufacturing, and about giving a new generation of film photographers the tools to create with.”
The project was originally unveiled in July 2023 after the team had researched whether reviving the camera was possible. Panon’s factory in Japan burned down in 2005, making production at the original site impossible.
The video shown at the unveiling of the new camera will soon be published on the WideluxX website.
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.
