Jeff Bridges’ WideluxX panoramic film camera opens for pre-order, limited to 350 units

Jeff Bridges’ WideluxX has crossed the line from celebrity-backed nostalgia into a real reservation-stage product, and that is what makes the project matter now. The first pre-order run is capped at 350 cameras, the price sits at $4,400 in the United States and €5,200 in Germany including VAT, and the wait for first shipments is expected to run about six to eight months. For photographers, that turns the WideluxX from a pleasant idea into a concrete decision about whether panoramic film still deserves a place in a modern kit.

The camera is being built by SilverBridges, the group Bridges formed with Susan Bridges, Marwan El Mozayen and Charys Schuler. The company is manufacturing and hand-assembling the camera in Germany, a detail that places the WideluxX closer to a craft restoration than a mass-market relaunch. Each order can be personalized with two or three letters, a small touch that reinforces how much this product is aimed at collectors and devoted film shooters as much as Bridges fans.

The design itself is the point. The WideluxX F10 uses a built-in 26mm f/2.8 lens and produces 24×58mm panoramic frames on 35mm film, keeping the signature wide aspect that made the original Widelux such a cult object. It is fully mechanical and offers three shutter speeds, 1/15, 1/125 and 1/250 second, which means the camera asks for a slower, more deliberate approach than most digital bodies or even many film rangefinders. One roll of 36 exposures should yield roughly 21 images, a rate that turns every frame into a small commitment.

That scarcity is part of the Widelux story from the beginning. The original camera was made by Panon Camera Shoko in Tokyo from 1959 to 2000, and the F-series swing-lens models produced about a 24×59mm frame on 35mm film. One estimate puts total production at only about 20,000 cameras, which helps explain why surviving originals became prized collector pieces long before anyone started talking seriously about a revival.

Bridges’ own attachment to the format gives the project its emotional center. He has described using the Wide-Lux as a panning still camera with a 28mm lens, and says he loves the way it captures movement and multiple stories in a single frame. That sensibility still defines the appeal here: not perfection, but the peculiar, streaked, expansive look that only a swing-lens panoramic camera can make.

The early demand suggests there is real appetite for that look. Nearly 50 units sold in about 15 minutes after pre-orders opened, a brisk start for a camera this specialized and this expensive. The WideluxX may never be a mainstream comeback, but it already looks like something more consequential than a tribute object: a serious bet that the long, strange grammar of panoramic film still has buyers willing to commit.