What a strange beast. Digital cameras and smartphones have made the panoramic shot easy, but back when we were stuck with film, these sorts of sweeping shots required a lot of fuss to stitch together shots and form a single photograph of up to 360 degrees.
Japanese manufacturer Panon Camera Shoko introduced the Widelux in 1958 or 1959 as a camera made specifically for panoramic shots. As the user snaps the photo, the 26mm ultra-wide-angle lens swings from left to right, capturing one long, unbroken photograph over a 140-degree arc.
No longer in production, it has a superfan in none other than the A-list actor Jeff Bridges, who has a plan to bring it back to production. We don’t know when.
swing that lens, baby
Jeff Bridges, his wife Susan Bridges, SilvergrainClassics’ editor-in-chief Marwan El Mozayen, and SilvergrainClassics’ Charys Schuler have all teamed up to bring the Widelux back into production.
It isn’t hard to see how they came up with the name. To distinguish the revival from the original Widelux, which ceased production in the early 2000s, they tacked on an extra X to the name.
“The WideluxX will be purely mechanical, preserving everything that made the original great while incorporating sustainable manufacturing practices,” says Silverbridges’ website. Silverbridges is the name of the company formed to resurrect the WideluxX.
“The Widelux has this great proportion, or ratio,” reads a quote attributed to Jeff Bridges on the SilvergrainClassics post on the WideluxX project from 2023.
“It’s kind of like how your eye sees, with peripheral vision. And the swing lens, it’s a whole new way of seeing! Between the time when the slit starts moving and when it’s done, the world has changed.”
Silverbridges plans to build it without using any plastics at all, and it’ll be made using “green electricity sources,” although the post doesn’t elaborate upon what kind of sources.
There’sn’t much more solid information available on when it’ll go on sale. WideluxX’s website has recently begun to refer to it as the 2025 WideluxX, which implies that Silverbridges envisions the WideluxX coming to market in 2025.
We’re not quite done with the year yet, but I’d say that if the camera hasn’t been given a firm, well-publicized date by now, or at least a fresh wave of detailed publicity, I sincerely doubt we’ll see it come to market in 2025.
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