Analogue (and analogue inspired) Newsletter August 2025

Welcome to the August Analogue (and analogue inspired) News and Tittle-Tattle.

July wanes into August and once that flies past and the children are back to School it’ll be all over. Does anyone else feel that Spring and Summer whizz along and vanish much faster than Autumn and Winter? I guess many of you guys will be in sunnier climes or in places where it’s always Summer, wish I was there!

This Months issue is a bit thin as had a family emergency and I spent a week in Astapor in Essos looking for Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen, I didn’t have much luck finding her but I did manage to shoot 263 keepers out of a total of 270 frames shot with my Olympus E-1. A good hit rate I’m quite pleased with. (Coming soon).

High Summer is always a good time to see Poppy Fields in bloom, along with fields with Bales of Hay; the Bales can be found in most places in Britain, but Poppy fields only in certain parts, Norfolk in East Anglia is a good place to visit some. The creative possibilities when faced with a field of wild red poppies is quite vast, sometimes bewildering, and it takes a while to make something more interesting than quick fire snaps of the red fields.

If you’re anywhere near Great Massingham and King’s Lynn in Norfolk, you’ll see some very very striking ones!

Talking about Norfolk, anyone familiar with the late John T Hansell? If you aren’t I strongly encourage you to seek out and enjoy the book, A Dream of the Land, published in 2005 to mark his 50th year in Photography, it was also the year in which he passed away.

If you’re a fan of Black and White Landscape and Cityscape Photography, you’ll be treated to a huge almost 200 page selection of sublime and beautiful plates shot on Medium Format and Panoramic Cameras in this book. Shot around Britain and other parts of the world, but mainly around the Norfolk Broads and Norfolk Coast near Cromer.

Continuing with Norfolk,  we have a Kickstarter for a new Photo Book by Norfolk resident  Jim Mortram documenting life for those at the margins of Britain’s welfare state. Featuring a selection of fantastic reportage Photography – well worth a visit to check out

I do like wristwatches, Mechanical as well as Quartz. I’ve always appreciated the workmanship, attention to detail and of course the pleasure of owning and wearing one. There seems to be a connection between wristwatch aficionados and Camera lovers, a visit to the popular wristwatch forum Watchuseek reveals a forum dedicated to watches and photography, you’ll find me on watchuseek as user ibbz. One thing I can’t get my head around is why many of those that wax lyrical about Mechanical wristwatches are tech geeks who love Digital cameras and shy well away from Film? One would have thought that an affection for analogue mechanical watches would mean one would also appreciate analogue mechanical cameras?

There aren’t that many Swiss camera brands around, I can think of Arca and Alpa, but we do have a rich watch making tradition in Germany and one of it’s most famous Photographic sons started off his career as a 20-year-old Swiss watchmaker’s apprentice; Ernst Leitz. Leica Camera AG do appreciate Analogue (they just released a new 35mm Film) along with Wristwatches. They manufacture a range of beautifully made and finished Mechanical wristwatches which have movement’s made to Leica specification, Leica Calibre LA-3002, a movement made in collaboration with Chronode The watches are in-house designed and made (bar the movement) and very highly regarded in the industry and amongst enthusiasts. Oh, and some feature a Red Dot!

Now how about a wrist watch with integrated Light Meter? Or Exposure calculator? A quick search lead me to this enjoyable article from Time and Tide Watches.  About watches for Photography nerds! Some very interesting watches in this article, but the one which really caught my attention was The Horage Lensman 2.  It looks sweet and with the exposure calculator around the bezel, looks like a vintage Light Meter. Bloody cool looking watch, check out their Website for details.

The price is very high approx $8000 – so I doubt it’ll be for every one. Their latest release is a Brian Griffin Limited Edition, I admit I’d never heard of him but apparently he’s quite big in Photography and Film Making.

CineStill

The guys at CineStill have recently released a new product! No, not a Film, but an Adobe CC Plug-in (LR, PS and ACR). They kindly sent us their press release earlier in July.

This powerful tool enables accurate colour scanning of Negatives, especially for those using their Camera Scanning process – whereby you use a Macro lens on a Digital camera to photograph the Negative then process to convert.

CineStill are dedicated to this and continue, to their credit, to innovate and help make the process faster and easier.

I haven’t used this Plug-in myself, as i) I have an ancient Light Room 5, ii) My Digital Camera is an ancient 5 Megapixel Four Thirds Olympus and iii) I don’t use Colour negative and being a stubborn old git I refuse to.

BUT most people do, so this would make, judging by what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, greatly speed up the process and enable consistent accurate colour transfer into the Digital process – something which has eluded many. Do leave us some feedback here about your experience!

Hamish and team,

Hope you’ve been doing well! We’re announcing the first in a summer full of new products: a new free downloadable product, called the CS Negative+ Convert Tools for Adobe CC, designed to streamline the film conversion process — delivering true-to-film color with faster results, right out of the camera. This has been years in the making and utilizes our new SpectraCOLOR™ advanced color science technology, inspired and informed by the characteristic spectral sensitometric curves of traditional RA-4 darkroom prints and motion picture cinema projection prints. It’s available for FREE download and works with Adobe Camera Raw in Bridge or Photoshop and in all current versions of Lightroom – including Lr Mobile.

The product listing is live now on our website

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