Jeff Bridges Absolutely Loves His New WideluxX Panoramic Film Camera

It has been a long time coming, but the new WideluxX (stylized Widelux•X) panoramic analog camera continues getting closer to release. Hollywood star Jeff Bridges and his wife, photographer Susan Bridges (née Geston), unboxed not only the prototype the company unveiled last fall, but a much more complete camera that looks very nearly production-ready. Jeff Bridges may be an Oscar-winning actor, but his happiness when opening the new WideluxX camera is the real deal.

After being announced in September 2024, the new WideluxX panoramic camera, which will be called the F10, is truly taking shape, as reported by DPReview.

Even though the new WideluxX is based on another camera, the Panon Widelux F8, building a new camera is a massive undertaking. The Widelux factory burned down 20 years ago, so there haven’t been any new Widelux F8 cameras on the market for a long time, and repair parts have been harder to find all the time. This is bad news for Jeff Bridges, who loves the Widelux and has used it on many Hollywood film sets over the years.

Not willing to let the Widelux vanish entirely, Jeff and Susan Bridges teamed up with SilvergrainClassics’ editor-in-chief, Marwan El Mozayen, and Charys Schuler to form the new SilverBridges company to bring the Widelux camera back from the dead. It has been an ambitious project from the start, but it is clearly making significant headway.

While it is still unclear when the WideluxX F10 will arrive or how much it will cost, the Bridges got their hands on a fully functional camera that, at least in the non-embeddable video, looks ready for showtime. The pair of photographers could barely contain their joy, with Jeff Bridges expressing concern that he might break something out of excitement while loading the new camera with Kodak Tri-X 400 black-and-white film.

With the film loaded and wound, Jeff Bridges took the very first shot on the camera before handing it to his wife for a turn. Then they took a self-portrait together for the third frame. All three shots are shown in the video, and they look great — classic, just like they were shot on the beloved original Widelux.

When discussing the prototype camera last autumn, El Mozayen and Schuler explained that the new WideluxX camera would feature “many small improvements” compared to the original. The new camera, handmade in Germany, features improved knobs and new materials inspired by the original. The team reverse-engineered as much of the F8 as possible, while making meaningful tweaks where they made sense.

“Its DNA is still an F8,” Schuler said of the new camera.

“I think we see ourselves as the missing link between the history of analog photography and the future of analog photography. It’s not only about the Widelux, which is an amazing camera and a wonderful tool for artists, but it’s about the future of analog photography. Giving a new generation of photographers the tools to work on. It’s about the art and the craft of camera manufacturing and analog photography,” Jeff Bridges said last year.

Fingers crossed the new WideluxX will officially launch this year. Photographers can sign up for updates on the WideluxX website. If other photographers are even half as excited for the new panoramic film camera as Jeff Bridges is in the new unboxing video, the company may well have a smash hit on its hands.


Image credits: SilverBridges