In today's episode Jeff Bridges and his wife are bringing back the Widelux, iPhone 17 Pro Zoom lens, Disney's gamble on a CinemaScope lens and more.
You can find the show notes here.
You can find the show notes here.
Show Notes
Welcome back to the show everyone, Liam here and you’re listening to Episode 478 of the Liam Photography Podcast for the week of October 30, 2025.
In today’s stories, Sabrina Carpenter, Jeff Bridges, a Disney lens gamble and a rare White Iberian Lynx and more so let’s get into our stories from our friends at PetaPixel.
It is becoming more common to see celebrities and pop stars using classic cameras as the vintage aesthetic continues to burn white hot. However, most tend to stick with digital — Taylor Swift and Selina Gomez both really like the Olympus EM-10 Mark IV, for example. Sabrina Carpenter is going even further back in time though as she has been spotted sporting a beautiful Contax G2.
In images captured this week in New York City, Carpenter can be seen carrying the titanium-colored film rangefinder, including the optional TLA200 flash unit (using on-camera flash has become incredibly popular among Gen Z). The whole series of images were quick to spark conversation on Reddit yesterday with fans latching on to Carpenter’s fall aesthetic.
“Ugh, what a vibe. I’m recovering in Boston and the New England fall mood is in full swing. I need to get a sweater and a camera,” one Redditor wrote.
While most discussed her style more generally, the Contax G2 in her hand did not go unnoticed.
“Aaaand Contax G2 Prices just went up another 1000 dollars,” another Redditor noted.
While an exaggeration, if enough people notice the camera, the price of the Contax G2 is likely to go up as it is already a popular choice among analog street photographers because of its unique shooting experience and appeal of the lenses, which are renowned for their unique mix of sharpness and character. The G2 was introduced in 1996 — two years after the G1 — and remained in production until 2005, when parent company Kyocera ceased all Contax manufacturing.
Carpenter appears to have her G2 equipped with either the 45mm f/2 Zeiss Planar T* or the 28mm f/2.8 Biogon T* lens. It is more likely the 45mm given the width of the front element, although it is difficult to say for certain. The camera is also often seen with the 35mm f/2 Zeiss Planar T* or the 90mm f/2.8 Zeiss Sonnar T* lenses, although the latter is significantly larger than the other prime lenses.
The Contax G2 is special because it is a unique hybrid of technologies. While it is a rangefinder — photographers do not see through the lens, but rather through a windowed, side-mounted viewfinder — it is also equipped with autofocus. The G2 is surprisingly powerful for a camera of the era and fans of the rangefinder will say it seems as though Contax was just throwing every piece of high-performance technology it could into the system. The autofocus can be either single point or continuous and is exceptionally accurate, allowing photographers to fully rely on it.
Manual focus is odd, since the lenses cannot be turned to focus by hand. Instead, the G2 integrates a flat circular dial to the left of the lens mount which, when manual focus is selected, allows a photographer to focus the lens based on distance, which is shown to them via a meter inside of the viewfinder. It is unusual and can be imprecise, but it is at least an option for those who prefer the manual experience.
The G2 is a lovely camera that provides one of just a few truly unique photography experiences. It’s not difficult to find — at least not yet — and at the time of publication, KEH had eight in stock in the Titanium color. They aren’t cheap, however, and ones in the best condition cost about $2,000 for the body only. Those in rougher condition can be had for under $1,500.
What might be harder to find is the flash unit. While they do appear on eBay occasionally, they are rarer (especially in the titanium finish) and significantly more expensive, often priced at more than $600 — more than the lenses cost, which can be had for under $550.
The Contax G2 is also available in black, but the titanium finish is often considered the better look. That is, of course, subjective.
Steve Irwin’s son Robert, famous in his own right and a talented photographer, recently revealed that he is constantly having to deal with thieves stealing his photo gear.
Irwin, who is currently on Dancing With the Stars, tells People that the biggest hazard he faces as a wildlife photographer is not poisonous snakes or snapping crocodiles, but thieves.
“I was flying through Nairobi, and we touched down, and I have my hard case full of camera gear,” he tells People. “I had to check it because it didn’t fit as carry-on.”
As traveling photographers know, being detached from your camera gear is always unnerving, and Irwin was instantly alarmed when he didn’t see his camera come off the conveyor belt.
“I just went, ‘That’s strange.’ I don’t know what it was, but I just went, ‘I’m just going to check the conveyor belt one more time’ and I walked back and out of the corner of my eye, I see the Pelican case. It’s on a trolley and someone’s walking with it out the front door stealing it,” Irwin says.
His camera case is covered in stickers and has a unique look, “you couldn’t mistake for someone else’s,” he says. Fortunately, Irwin was able to retrieve his case after he intercepted the thief.
“He looks at me and he looks around at everyone and gives it to me and then just takes off running,” he tells People. “But this happens all the time. It happens everywhere, all around the world.”
When interviewed by PetaPixel in 2023, Irwin said he’s always had something to do with the camera. “Whether I’m in front or behind and then navigating how you can use that platform to create positive change — to get your images, voice, story, and what you stand for out into the world.”
“The difficult part is understanding your subject, knowing the story that you want to tell, figuring out how you can put yourself in a position to get an image that no one else has gotten before you. That’s where it starts to get tricky, and then navigating the world and having a platform with whatever your craft is,” he said.
Photographer and YouTube creator Mathieu Stern saw an incredible piece of cinematic and optical history show up on an auction site. While it was outside his price range, it was not beyond the reach of Atlas Lens Co., known for its Orion and Mercury series cinema lenses. The lens in question was a Bausch + Lomb CinemaScope anamorphic lens attachment, which could turn a traditional cinema lens into a then-groundbreaking anamorphic optic.
“I sent [Dan] the link, and he immediately bought it,” Stern says of emailing Dan Kanes at Atlas Lens Co. the link to the cinema lens. Kanes, a fan of Stern’s work, thought it was only fair that the photographer got to try the lens before it went into Atlas Lens Co.’s museum.
“A few days later, a plain box showed up at my door. Inside was a battered carrying case, the kind of relic you expect to see in an Indiana Jones movie. And when I saw this detail, my jaw dropped,” Stern says. The detail was a sticker on the case that reads, “20th Century Fox Camera Dept, 80 – 5, 6468.”
As for why this sticker matters so much, Stern invites viewers to join him on a trip back in time to the early 1950s, when Walt Disney was “under enormous pressure.”
Walt Disney, who had been celebrated for decades by now for pioneering work in animation, was struggling to earn respect as a live-action filmmaker.
“Then came the project that could change everything,” Stern says. “An adaption of Jules Verne’s novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Walt Disney loved it so much that he poured nearly all of his money into the production. It became the most ambitious and the most expensive film in Hollywood history at the time.”
The stakes were “higher than ever,” as Stern puts it. “If the film failed, it wouldn’t just be a box office disappointment, it could have broken down the entire Disney empire.”
In pursuit of making the movie as visually spectacular as possible, Disney turned its sights toward a burgeoning cinema technology: CinemaScope. This technology, derived in the 1950s by 20th Century Fox from the Anamorphoscope filming process developed by French inventor Henri Chrétien in the 1920s, brought the anamorphic format to contemporary filmmaking with the introduction of CinemaScope. Like filmmakers still do today, CinemaScope enabled artists to use anamorphic lenses to squeeze wider movies out of 35mm film. While a 2.39:1 or 2.55:1 movie is commonplace today, in 1953, it delivered filmgoers an experience they had never had before.
Despite Disney’s record-setting budget and general influence, it could secure only a single CinemaScope anamorphic adapter and lens for filming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which, of course, had to be outfitted in a highly specialized, difficult-to-use underwater camera rig.
The film’s director, the late Oscar-winning Richard Fleischer, noted in an interview that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was only the second film shot in CinemaScope, so the team had little history to draw on. They also had to focus everything twice, once on the anamorphic adapter and again on the actual lens. Worse yet, the two focused in opposite directions. Given that the team had only one of each optic, they had to be extremely careful throughout production.
It is this Bausch + Lomb anamorphic adapter that Stern got his hands on in Paris in 2025, determined to adapt this piece of cinematic history to his modern Sony mirrorless camera. For anyone who has seen Stern’s work before, it is of little surprise that he found a way to do it.
“For the first time in decades, this piece of glass could sit in front of a taking lens again,” Stern says. In this case, the primary capture lens is his trust Konica Hexagon 57mm f/1.2 prime. To prevent light leaks, he sealed the connection with a series of custom tubes and was ready to go.
The same incredible flare and rendering that was featured in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is still available today, albeit on Stern’s vastly different setup. He even uses close-up adapters to enable close-focusing and shallower depth-of-field that the original filmmaking setup prevented, and the bokeh is genuinely incredible.
Wanting to give the legendary Bausch + Lomb anamorphic adapter one more chance under the sea, Stern got permission to take his large camera rig to the Aquarium de Paris and film various underwater creatures. After more than 70 years, the lens that joined Captain Nemo on his aquatic adventures was “able to go under the sea once more.”
“I still can’t believe I had the chance to hold and actually shoot with this incredible piece of cinema history. A lens that was once at the heart of Walt Disney’s boldest gamble, and then forgotten for decades, only to resurface in the most unexpected way,” Stern concludes.
A photographer traveled across rural parts of South Australia, documenting abandoned buildings and towns that have fallen into decline.
Helin Bereket initially set out to cover Australia’s silo art but was struck by the buildings around them that were decaying.
“It’s not about ghost towns in the traditional sense, but rather places that exist in a kind of limbo: partly lived in, partly forgotten,” Bereket tells PetaPixel. “The project shows the quiet beauty and stark reality of these spaces, places where history lingers in crumbling facades, fading signs, and empty streets. It’s a portrait of towns suspended between past and present.”
Bereket began shooting Abandoned Australia in March 2025 during a road trip to Victoria and South Australia. Over the month-long trip, the project evolved “organically” as she began to explore rural areas.
“Whenever I found myself in these areas, I spent some time wandering, observing, and documenting,” Bereket says. “I wasn’t searching for specific subjects so much as responding to what I found. Often, I’d arrive in a town for the silo art, only to stumble across an abandoned hall, a derelict house, or a fading main street.”
The photographer says she was looking for structures that “still tell a story; the kind of places that make you wonder who once lived there, and what happened.”
Bereket’s photos are not the usual kind of urban explorer photos because the towns she visited still had people living in them.
“I didn’t want to trespass,” she explains. “Plus, the outsides usually told enough of the story: peeling paint, broken windows, old signs. You can read so much from that alone. And honestly, with Australia’s snakes and spiders, I wasn’t too keen on poking around inside.”
Bereket, who used a Nikon Zfc for the project, says she found the sense of emptiness difficult.
“These towns are not bustling with people, so photographing them sometimes felt like documenting absence itself. There’s also a delicate balance in portraying them respectfully, without reducing them to stereotypes of ‘ghost towns.’ Honoring the quiet dignity of these places, while still acknowledging their decline, was a challenge I thought about constantly.”
Just over a year ago, Oscar-winning actor and talented photographer Jeff Bridges announced that he had co-founded a new camera company, SilverBridges, to bring back his beloved Widelux film camera as the WideluxX. SilverBridges has now unveiled the first prototype: WideluxX Prototype 0001.
“Holding a one-of-a-kind camera prototype in your hand is always going to be exciting,” writes Charys Schuler of SilvergrainClassics. “But when some of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it are your own, it feels nothing short of extraordinary.”
Schuler, alongside SilvergrainClassics’ editor-in-chief Marwan El Mozayen, Jeff Bridges, and Bridges’ wife, acclaimed photographer Susan Bridges (née Geston), teamed to form SilverBridges, a portmanteau of SilvergrainClassics and the Bridges family. SilverBridges’ sole mission, at least for now, is reviving the weird and wonderful Wildelux panoramic film camera.
The prototype camera was unveiled last Friday at the International Association for Panoramic Photography convention in Minnesota via a video, which should be published online in full in the near future. In the video, Jeff and Susan Bridges introduce themselves and discuss the project and the prototype before handing it over to Schuler and El Mozayen.
Jeff Bridges has used his personal Widelux camera on many of his film sets over the years, capturing remarkable behind-the-scenes photos with significant artistic and cultural value. Unfortunately, the Widelux factory burned down 20 years ago, halting the release of new cameras and substantially disrupting possible repairs for existing models.
“20 years ago, the Widelux factory burned down, so we decided that rather than letting our favorite camera die, we’d bring her back to life,” Jeff and Susan Bridges say. “We’re keeping it old school; it’s a film camera handmade in Germany, built to last generations.”
Based on the prototype, which looks incredible, the team has developed a robust product that honors the spirit of the original Panon Widelux camera.
“There will be many small improvements, but its DNA is still the [Panon Widelux] F8,” Charys Schuler and Marwan El Mozayen say. “We see ourselves as a bridge between the history and the future of analog photography. It’s about the art and craft of camera manufacturing, and about giving a new generation of film photographers the tools to create with.”
Japan Camera Hunter chatted about the project with Schuler and El Mozayen, and the two expressed that they are staying as close to the original camera as possible. They “reverse engineered” the Widelux, as Japan Camera Hunter writes, and had to make new versions of all the old parts, since there are no existing parts piles to pull from. They are long gone. It is a significant challenge, but as the prototype shows, the team is well-positioned to pull off something really special.
Photographers can keep up to date with the WideluxX project on the project’s website, where the new introduction video should be posted shortly.
Photographer Chris Levine, who captured an iconic holographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, is being sued by artist Rob Munday who claims that he is the co-creator of the works Equanimity and Lightness of Being.
The widely-known images were created in 2004, and Munday alleges that Levine — who describes himself as an “artist who works with light and who uses photography in his projects” — has wrongly asserted sole artistic credit on the images.
The portraits were commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the island’s allegiance to the English crown. Produced across two sittings in 2003 and 2004, the images have since been displayed in leading British art institutions and are held in the National Portrait Gallery. They are among the most recognizable depictions of the late monarch.
Munday, who has worked in holography since the early 1980s, argues that his expertise was essential to the creation of the portraits and that he should be recognized as a joint author.
“I’ve been going through this cycle for 20 years,” he tells the Guardian, the newspaper that broke the story. “I’m not young any more; it felt like this had to be fought now or never.”
Munday asserts that he and Levine reached a settlement with the Jersey Heritage Trust in 2005, acknowledging joint authorship, and that this agreement has since been breached. The lawsuit filed in England’s High Court claims that Levine and his company, Sphere 9, violated Munday’s moral rights by failing to credit him properly.
Levine disputes Munday’s claims, maintaining that he alone was commissioned as the artist. “Mr Munday does not hold any copyright in Equanimity or Lightness of Being,” Levine says in a statement while characterizing Munday as “a technical subcontractor” who assisted in production “as part of my team, not as an artistic partner.”
“Any claim on my rights will be fiercely defended. This is my art,” he adds.
The disagreement follows a separate legal case brought in 2024 by the Jersey Heritage Trust against Levine, alleging breach of contract and the sale of unlicensed editions of the portraits. That case was settled out of court. In a joint statement issued at the time, the trust and Levine said: “The parties acknowledge that Chris Levine was the sole artist commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust to create the portrait,” while also recognizing the contributions of “holographer Robert Munday of UK Company Spatial Imaging” among other collaborators.
Munday says he decided to pursue legal action after Levine posted a statement on Instagram following that settlement. “Truth prevailed,” Levine wrote. “I was the sole artist commissioned and am now legally recognized as the sole author of the work.” The post has since been deleted.
Levine gained international visibility with Lightness of Being, an image of the Queen shown with closed eyes. The portrait has featured in prominent exhibitions and appears on the cover of Levine’s forthcoming monograph.
Munday is seeking formal recognition as co-author and a public acknowledgment that the portraits were jointly created. The case remains ongoing.
Sandmarc has announced a new Telephoto 48mm lens for Apple’s latest iPhone models, designed to take Apple’s tetraprism camera even further.
“Engineered to push the limits of Apple’s tetraprism camera, the Sandmarc Telephoto 48mm lens brings pro-level magnification to iPhone’s dedicated zoom,” Sandmarc promises.
The 48mm lens screws to the iPhone when it is alongside one of Sandmarc’s dedicated cases, mounting in front of the phone’s telephoto camera. It can also be attached with a clip-on mount. It accepts 43mm filters when used with the included filter adapter, so it supports many of Sandmarc’s filters, including variable ND and special effects filters.
In the case of the iPhone 17 Pro, which features a new 4x optical zoom lens, users can achieve twice as much zoom, so 8x optical zoom (200mm equivalent).
While the iPhone 17 Pro’s new 4x zoom offers a bit less reach than the prior generation’s 5x zoom, PetaPixel found it to deliver superior overall image quality thanks to a 56% larger 48-megapixel quad Bayer image sensor. This means that the telephoto camera can now capture 48-megapixel RAW files.
“The 4x lens proves to offer way more resolution than the older 5x camera and even surpasses it if you crop to an equivalent 5x field of view. The resolution advantage is remarkable and now gives the iPhone 17 Pro a strong lineup of cameras without exception,” Chris Niccolls writes in PetaPixel‘s iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max Review for Photographers.
The Sandmarc Telephoto 48mm lens is also available for other iPhone models, not just the newest iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. When used on an iPhone 16 Pro series phone or the iPhone 15 Pro Max, it offers 10x optical zoom.
The Sandmarc Telephoto 48mm lens for Apple tetraprism cameras is available to preorder now for $269.99, so it is a significant outlay for iPhone photographers. Sandmarc says it will begin shipping by the end of November.
Those with older or non-Pro iPhone models are not left out, though they cannot use the new 48mm Telephoto (Tetraprism Edition). Instead, they must use Sandmarc’s older Telephoto 58mm, which works with all iPhone models, including the iPhone Air. Sandmarc says its new telephoto lens is well-suited to photographing distant scenes, live events, and portraits.
A young amateur photographer in Spain has captured the first-ever images of a white Iberian lynx — thought to be one of the rarest big cats on the entire planet.
29-year-old Ángel Hidalgo works at a construction materials factory, but every spare moment is devoted to photographing nature. He often travels across the region of Andalusia in search of wildlife and, over a month ago, set up a camera trap. When he reviewed the footage, he could hardly believe what he saw.
“I thought it was a camera effect,” Hidalgo tells National Geographic España about the moment he first saw an image of the ghostly cat. “And from then on, I dedicated myself to the search for the lynx. I’m still in shock.”
After seeing the camera trap footage, Hidalgo was desperate to see the “wonder” with his own eyes. What followed was many failed attempts: “On many occasions, I was about to throw in the towel,” Hidalgo writes on an Instagram post
But one gloomy morning, after it had rained all night, Hidalgo set out once again to try and find the mystery animal. “I was walking, as I had so many times, when suddenly in the distance I saw a white bump that seemed to radiate its own light.”
With his own eyes, Hidalgo observed the leucistic Iberian lynx covered in snow-white fur and gazed into its penetrating eyes. “I was stunned, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt very fortunate to witness this moment, to be able to see this great cat in its natural habitat.”
The animal Hidalgo saw and photographed is a leucistic Iberian lynx. Leucism results in a partial loss of pigmentation, causing the animal to appear white.
National Geographic España notes that the Iberian lynx was reclassified from endangered to vulnerable last year, a major biodiversity success in Spain. There are now 2,400 individuals on the Iberian Peninsula.
“Meeting this feline was an unforgettable memory for me, and it made me think about the importance of nature and conservation,” adds Hidalgo, who is not disclosing the specific location he took the photo as illegal hunting continues to affect the Iberian lynx population.
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