I’m back: film without film | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Film pho­tog­ra­phy today will not sur­prise any­one. The sto­ry moves in a spi­ral, and the film has already received anoth­er round of devel­op­ment: influ­encers broad­cast sim­ple soap­box­es into sto­ries, pros take pic­tures on mastodons proven for decades, and new devel­op­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries open in big cities here and there.

From a philis­tine point of view, the film seems to be some­thing incom­pre­hen­si­ble in detail. Which one to choose, how to shoot, where to devel­op — along the way, a lot of ques­tions arise that drown out the desire to try for many. This applies even to those who don’t shoot at all, but on the wave of trends I found an old cam­era on my grandfather’s shelf.

The Swiss start­up I’m back in 2020 com­plet­ed its Kick­starter fundrais­ing, exceed­ing the declared amount ten times over. Thus, I’m back appeared on the mar­ket — the first uni­ver­sal dig­i­tal back for ana­log cam­eras.

Now there are already many dig­i­tal backs on the mar­ket, they are main­ly pro­duced for medi­um for­mat cam­eras (Has­sel­blad, Bron­i­ca), so the founders of the Swiss com­pa­ny were not pio­neers.

I’m back is com­pat­i­ble with rangefind­er cam­eras like Leica and Kyiv, as well as with those cam­eras from Lomog­ra­phy (the same Diana F), both with the clas­sic Canon AF‑1, and with Olym­pus, Pen­tax, Yashik, Nikon and Minol­ta … the list could go on for a very long time.

The back is installed on the cam­era instead of the back cov­er in such a way that the built-in sen­sor fits into the win­dow of the film frame and takes on the image pass­ing through the lens. It has a 2″ touch­screen dis­play, USB‑C port, built-in Wi-Fi, mic input, flash sync sup­port and a 14MP sen­sor… 1/2.33″ for­mat! Yes, yes, no full-frame matrix.

Sam­ple pho­to on Leica M2 with about pla­nar 120mm + I’m Back

The back­drop went through 6 rebirths before it hit the online store shelf and went on sale, and in 2018 it already won a prize at Pho­tok­i­na as one of the most inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts.

Back fea­tures:

• res­o­lu­tion — 16mp;
• for­mat: jpeg and raw;
  
• frame size: 24x36mm, like a stan­dard film frame;
  
• ISO: 100 — 3600;
  
• dis­play: LCD 240*RGB*320;
  
• out­puts: Micro HDMI, USB C Type;
  
• Video Res­o­lu­tion: 4K 3840*2160/30FPS — 1920*1080P/60fps — 1280*720P/120fps.