The actor Jeff Bridges (yes, this Jeff Bridges) has decided to create a panoramic film camera based on his love of this photographic medium.
Bridges, who has an affinity for the very specific film device that is the panoramic Widelux film camera, has decided to put it back into the public eye. He’s doing this by remaking the classic device with a slightly different name, the “WideluxX”.
This was something he casually promoted during a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in which he appeared to talk about his upcoming second season of “The Old Man” on FX.
According to Bridges’ brief comments about his camera,
“Most of the photographs I take are done with a Widelux camera. It’s a panning, still camera. I use the 35mm version. It’s got a 28mm lens that pans nearly 180 degrees. Instead of a traditional shutter, it has a slit that, as the lens pans, exposes the film,”
A key difference between the Widelux and many other film cameras is that it uses a unique 26mm swing lens with a slit built into it instead of a normal shutter.
This lets the camera expose a wide area onto a strip of film as the slit pivots. This creates very wide and visibly curved panoramic shots whose negatives are twice that of a 35mm film frame width.
The Widelux also offers only set aperture values of 2.8, 4, 5.6 and 11, with also limited shutter speed options, including a 1/15, a 1/25 and 1/25.
Bridges mentions that his love of these cameras began in high school during a class photo in which the photographer used a Widelux and explained how it worked.
He also adds that the mechanics of the camera let a subject move quickly in such a way that they appear twice in the same photo.
Unfortunately, the Widelux camera in its original form hasn’t been manufactured in the decades since it was put into production by the Panon Camera Shoko company of Japan in 1958. Today it’s rare to find one without looking carefully.
This is where Bridges wants to come into the picture so to speak with his own remake of the original.
To pull this off he’s partnering with Silvergrain Classics’ chief editor Marwan El Mozayen and others to form a German company called SilverBridges (portmanteau of “Silvergrain Classics”, Jeff and his wife Susan Bridges) to have a production run of their remake available by 2025.
Another partner in the project, Charys Schuler, explains,
“Jeff, his wife Susan, SilvergrainClassics’ editor-in-chief Marwan El Mozayen, and I, Charys Schuler, are now the proud co-owners of a newly formed company which will produce the camera. While working on the project, the four of us at some point started calling ourselves ‘The Four Musketeers”
One of the challenges that the new company wants to overcome with its recreation of the Widelux is to fuse the old camera’s unique design with more robust modern technology.
Thus, the unique rotating lens of the Widelux will be built to deliver the same panoramic effect as the original for the sake of “vintage charm” but with modern durability.
The newly-formed company says that it wants to build something whose photographic uniqueness pleases both pros and enthusiast photographers who want high-quality but retro-oriented shooting.
SilverBridges hasn’t gone into detail about how far they are into the development of their camera but they have affirmed that they want it to be available by 2025.
We also don’t know what retail price it will have, but given the average cost of modern consumer semi-pro digital cameras, it shouldn’t be insanely expensive. Original Widelux cameras in good condition currently sell for $1000 or more whenever they become available.
Anyone interested in getting further updates on this unusual but cool new photographic project can sign up for information through the WideluxX website.
Images credit: WideluxX
