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XP4N: I made a (photography) thing!
How it started
As so often, this started with something I myself really want to have.
I've been obsessing over the Hasselblad XPAN for a while - a film camera from the 90s, long out of production. It shoots photos in a wide 65x24 aspect ratio (two 35mm frames side by side).
Thanks to this panoramic format, and pairing it with specific kinds of film it can turn anything you shoot into a movie still. It's instant cinematic bliss.
Currently, functioning XPANs fetch thousands of euros, even in dodgy condition. So I decided to make an app that gets me as close as possible to the experience.
How it's going
Enter XP4N: a simple photography app that does one thing really well: shoot 65x24 photos and simulate 4 film stocks to make any shot look like a movie still.
Here's an example of an unedited XP4N picture, simulating the popular Cinestill 800T film:
One of the cool things about Cinestill is its signature "halation" effect, where light reflects back onto the film and creates red/orange halos around the brightest spots in the photo. As can be seen in this photo (also unedited, straight out of XP4N):
In addition to Cinestill, it also emulates Vision3 250D and the ever popular Portra 400 film for daylight photography.
And because Apple took its sweet time reviewing the app I also had time to add a B&W emulation while I was waiting. For which I picked the interesting Ilford Ortho Plus film, which is nice and contrasty and has a high sensitivity bias towards blue (meaning blues become brighter, and reds become slightly darker).
Find out more
I've written a piece about the how and why of XP4N: Read it here (Medium)
You can find XP4N on the AppStore for the princely sum of $0.99 if you feel like having a go for yourself (or you could see it as a tip-jar that gives back a neat little app as a thank you 
).
You can find XP4N on the AppStore here: XP4N on the iOS AppStore
Comments
Oh man! I’m guessing it’s not coming out on android? Perhaps I should come back to the fold and get an iPhone again
Cool for 99p a no brainer and it Bram.
Unfortunately it's iOS only
Congrats! It's a great idea. I remember the X-Pan, one benefit was the higher resolution because of the double frame.
Also, you can probably sell your TB303 and get an X-Pan plus some change, right?
I think the prices for XPANs are equally crazy. I saw two for sale in Amsterdam recently, both for €5k+... Not sure what 303s go for these days but probably no joke either.
Madness!
Interesting article BTW, I love old film stocks and bloom/glare in photos
@brambos just got this for my iPhone 12 (Pro Max model) and the live preview doesn't update when I change the film settings, is this the expected behaviour? The photos have the processing, but you can't preview it in realtime.
I nearly bought an Xpan in the 90s but didn’t – they’re a bit fragile really
Instead I bought a Contax T-VS, which after a few months, fell apart (took back to Fox Talbot, eventually refund)
The Xpan desire was partly influenced because I was getting into QTVR panos, at the time I was shooting 12x frames on a 20mm Nikkor on my F4 on a Kaidan nodal-centering rig
Ultimately though I realised I could just shoot my Mamiya C330 and waste the top and bottom of the frame and it’s still be cheaper than an Xpan
No it would be cool if it had a preview mode before taking the photo.
Instabuy Bram!
+1 for a preview mode!
Also, how about a cropped RAW file save option?
Yes, that's expected. The viewfinder is just a hole in the camera that helps you frame the shot. It doesn't know what type of film is loaded or what sort of dark-room processing is going to happen afterwards.
Cool. I’ve lusted after an X-Pan/Fuji TX-3 for years!
Not the ideal light, haven’t seen the sun for ages :-| would like a non-ortho B&W option one day maybe? The ortho film loses the clouds completely.
Yes, I may consider adding a HP5 as well. The Ortho is super sensitive to blues, so indeed skies and clouds tend to become much brighter.
Just like a real film camera
I read that Jeff Bridges was working to reintroduce the Widelux camera, which used a moving lens to expose similar panoramic photos to the X-Pan/TX-3. And whilst a swing lens camera isn’t the same as an X-Pan it should be a lot cheaper!
Jeff “the Dude” Bridges? Mind = blown!
Congratulations. The design has a Bram Bos vibe I like very much.
That would be great. HP5+ is my favourite film. I still use it today.
I get that
but still it would be nice to see the result in realtime. I'm not sending the phone off to a lab to have the pictures developed 
The preview is essentially a video feed. I’m not sure I could pull off all the processing that is done to the image in realtime on a video stream.
Would it be a good compromise to make the “thumbnail” of what is saved bigger - so you get more feedback of what your last shot looks like ?
There was an app that made you choose a ‘film’ take 36 exposures then you had to ‘develop’ them and start over. You didn’t see the photos until you’d ’developed’ the full roll. I think that was maybe taking things a bit too far lol
I'm not going to start making feature requests for a 99p app
BUT, in an ideal world where such things are created by the feature request fairy, not a real person with a life and so on, it would be nice if the live preview just gave some idea of the colour cast in the final photo. As I say, I'm not in the business of making demands for apps that cost next to nothing.
I think you may be in the wrong forum
😅
I love panoramic photography too. I can definitely see their interest in reviving it.
Instabuy!
Pretty interesting that Hasselblad, this iconic Swedish company from 1840, is nowadays majority owned by DJI, the mighty company that manufactures 65% of all flying drones in the world today!
Drones has become my new addictive hobby, just because the amazing cameras and the amazing video/still photages they produce - unbelievable technology…
Congratulations on the XP4N release! 🤩 I love the idea. I’ll test this beast in coming days, so it better be good, haha.
What would be really cool is if the thumbnail acted like taking a photo when texting does, where you can tap the thumbnail to go to the photos app and then when you hit "done" it returns to the text message. Maybe not possible, and probably not easy to do, but I like that feature a lot.
This is a super cool app. I'm not a photography nut, but I really like the results of trying it out just now. 👍🏼
It gives me flashbacks to my youth when the world still looked like this. (Not my early, early, youth when the world was still black and white, but elementary school days after the change.)
That's gorgeous!!!
Nice work @brambos 👊 You are a true creative.