How two people from Hesse saved Jeff Bridges’ favourite camera

It was a wedding present that would stay with Jeff Bridges for decades: in 1977, his wife Susan gave him a Widelux. The Hollywood star known for films such as The Big Lebowski, Crazy Heart and True Grit used the Japanese panoramic camera to photograph fellow actors and film crews behind the scenes. The Widelux’s rotating lens produces unusually wide images that can also capture movement. 

Its rotating lens captures movement in unusually wide images. 
But eventually, production of the legendary camera ceased. Spare parts became increasingly scarce, and the technical expertise was in danger of being lost. Jeff and Susan Bridges wanted to bring the Widelux back to life. The crucial connection led not to Japan or Hollywood, but to Germany – to the quiet spa town of Bad Nauheim in Hesse. 

It is there that Charys Schuler and Marwan El Mozayen publish the English-language photography magazine SilvergrainClassics. In 2019, the two analogue photography experts struck up a conversation with Bridges. They had actually planned to talk about his photographs. “Less than five minutes into the conversation, he asked whether we could get together to bring the Widelux camera back to life,” Schuler recalls. “At first we thought: he can’t be serious.” But he was. 

Rebuilding a camera without blueprints 

Japanese manufacturer Panon Camera Shokai launched the first Widelux in 1958. But how do you recreate a camera when its original design drawings no longer exist? When the manufacturer’s factory burned down in 2000, numerous technical documents were lost. “No blueprints, nothing at all. We had to start from scratch,” says El Mozayen. 
So Schuler and El Mozayen dismantled an original Widelux, photographing every detail, from tiny screws to springs hidden inside the body. They drew on support from their international network of analogue photography experts. “One person offers one tip, someone else another – and suddenly the pieces start to fit together,” says El Mozayen. 
It took five years to turn the idea into a working new camera. 

Jeff and Susan Bridges had a clear vision: the new Widelux had to be durable, contain no plastic parts or electronics, and be manufactured in Germany. “Jeff and Susan wanted a camera that would genuinely last for generations,” says El Mozayen. “Made in Germany was extremely important to them.” 

Germany has a long tradition of optics and precision engineering. And precision was exactly what rebuilding the camera required: the Widelux consists of hundreds of individual parts, with around 90 precision-engineered components that have to work together perfectly for the rotating mechanism. 

Working with a specialist manufacturing partner, the team redesigned key components and improved the camera’s construction. The idea is also that the components – all manufactured in Germany – will help keep older Widelux models in working order. 

The revival of analogue photography 

In 2023, Schuler and El Mozayen founded SilverBridges GmbH together with Jeff and Susan Bridges. The challenge now was not only to perfect the camera technically, but also to make series production commercially viable. Pre-orders opened in April 2026. Within weeks, all 350 cameras had sold out at €5,200 each.  

The rapid sell-out reflects a trend the founders have been observing for years: a renewed interest in analogue photography. For Charys Schuler, this is no contradiction in a world of digital images. “When photography came along, people didn’t stop painting,” she says. She believes analogue photography will continue to exist alongside digital photography. The Widelux, she says, satisfies “a deep longing for creativity”.