Half-frame cameras have garnered a bit of a cult following – enough for Pentax to make the Pentax 17 half-frame film camera (which we love) and for Fujifilm to make the X half, which is more of a digital ‘tribute’ to half-frame cameras than a faithful replica.

Film cameras have become a big thing among photographers trying to recapture the feel and mood of analog media, and the camera designs that went with it. Check out our guide to the best film cameras to see a long list of all the new film cameras on the market, and some classic oldies that are definitely worth seeking out on the used market. If you're new to all this, we also have a guide to camera film sizes and types.

The basic principle of a half-frame analog camera is that it uses regular 35mm film, but instead of capturing images horizontally using the 24mm height of the film and a horizontal width of 36mm, it captures images vertically, so they're 24mm high and 18mm wide (or 17mm if you allow for the extra gap between the half frames).

You get twice as many shots on the roll as they're roughly half the size – and the camera takes vertical rather than horizontal photos (of course, you can rotate the camera to swap from vertical to horizontal if you need to).

You do get twice as many exposures on a roll of film, which sounds like a cost saving, but then you have to find a lab that will do half -frame prints, and printing will cost more because there are more prints.

But by a strange twist of fate, half-frame cameras are particularly well suited to social sharing because they match the vertical orientation of mobile devices in a way that camera makers of old could never have anticipated.

Back, then, to the Kodak Ektar H35N. This is an improved version of the Ektar H35 we reviewed in 2024, replacing that camera's plastic lens with a glass one. We weren't over-impressed with the Ektar H35 at the time, but since then we've been swept along by a huge surge of interest in analog photography, so maybe this improved point and shoot Kodak deserves a second look.

Where half-frame cameras have so far been a somewhat expensive hipster fad, the Kodak is about as cheap as it’s possible for a camera to get. It’s also extremely crude, and is essentially no more sophisticated then a disposable single-use film camera.

The difference is that you can open the back to load and unload film, and you can swap out the single AAA battery for the flash. If you don’t use the flash, you don’t need the battery.

And in case you’re wondering what kind of exposure system it has and how the focusing works, it doesn’t really have either. It relies on the huge latitude of analog negative films to capture images in daylight ranging from bright sun to heavy overcast, and indoors you simply have to use the flash and stick to close-range subjects. The harsh flash look is really trending right now for its retro vibes, and this little Kodak does it brilliantly.

The focus is fixed. The lens has an aperture of f/11, so it has enough depth of field for distance of 1m and beyond, depending on how much sharpness you expect. This camera is all about the look, not technical precision.

This may not sound like the kind of camera you could be even remotely interested in, but hold on. You do have to shoot in the right kind of light (daylight or with flash), and you do have to trust your film to deal with degrees of overexposure and underexposure which would send a digital sensor into a tailspin. But you adapt surprisingly quickly. It’s a simple camera designed to do a simple job, and it does it brilliantly. If you could even contemplate using an Instax, this is cheaper and gives you much bigger and better prints with all the same character and more.

Bottom line? I started out in film photography and I know the limitations of analog film and its particular charm. The Kodak H35N took me straight back to simpler times and simpler cameras. I thought I would hate it, but I loved it.

Kodak Ektar H35N: price

• $64.99 / £67 (around AU$98)
• Factor in the cost of developing and printing – half-frame is more specialized and expensive

The Kodak Ektar H35N is a cheap camera! Its price is a million miles from the (expensive) sophistication of the Pentax 17 half-frame camera. The Kodak is also very basic. In fact, you can think of it as a bit like a disposable camera that you can re-use. It's available in a variety of colors and styles, and at a typical price of $64.99 / £67 (around AU$100), it’s a cute, inexpensive buy.

It’s crude, but at this price you probably won’t care. Do factor in the cost of developing and printing, though. You’ll need to find a lab that will process film from half-frame cameras, and the cost of prints will double – after all, there are twice as many per roll of film!

Kodak Ektar H35N: specs

Kodak Ektar H35N: design

• Plastic build but looks smart
• Simple controls (well, no controls really)
• No issues with film loading, shooting and rewinding
• Small but effective optical viewfinder

The Ektar H35N might be lightweight plastic, but the front panel has an attractive metallic finish that looks rather smart. Kodak has a knack for making cheap cameras look rather better than they are.

The lens is surrounded by a switch to activate the flash mode. This was extremely stiff on my review sample, so not exactly as convenient as it should be. To one side of the lens there’s another switch for the built in ‘star filter’. Is this useful? Possibly.

On the top, there’s not much to see at all. There’s a big shutter release, a cable release socket for bulb exposures – so you can actually do night shots if you don’t mind estimating how long you need to hold the shutter open for – and there’s also a frame counter to let you know how many shots you’ve taken.

Round the back it’s all semi-matte black plastic. There’s a somewhat stiff and vague switch at the side for opening the back to load and unload film, but you do not want to open the back accidentally, so it’s no bad thing if it is a little fiddly.

Once the film is loaded you use a thumbwheel at the bottom left to advance the film. In standard film camera style, you can’t take a shot until the film is wound on and the shutter is cocked – and once you’ve taken the shot, you have to wind on again to re-cock the shutter. It’s foolproof. And, plastic or not, the film advance and shutter release worked perfectly.

Even film loading is straightforward. I had to pull out just a little more of the film leader to engage properly with the take-up spool, and then I did my usual thing after the back was closed, which is to take up the tension on the rewind crank and check it’s turning as I advance to the first frame. It worked fine.

You know when the film is at the end because you can’t wind on any further, so you press a button in the base to disengage the film transport mechanism, and wind it all back into the film canister with the crank handle.

The Ektar H35N might be cheap, but mine worked fine, with no film jams, no accidental double exposures, and no dramas at all.

Kodak Ektar H35N: performance

• Good picture quality
• Surprisingly tolerant to changing light
• Nice vintage flash look
• Good colors and contrast (I used a good lab)

I started out in film photography before switching to digital right when digital cameras first came in – and there are a few things I'd forgotten about shooting with film.

First, there's nothing quite like opening a pack of prints from the photo lab and looking through them. It doesn’t matter what kind of monitor you have on your desktop – I have a 27-inch 4K BenQ – or what kind of phone or tablet; a digital display is simply not the same as holding a stack of prints in your hand and going through them one by one. Maybe you don’t care – that’s fine – but for me it was a reminder of just how much value simple physical objects can have.

Of course, you can get your digital camera or smartphone images printed too. But they don’t look like this. Digitally-captured images are so technically superior that there’s almost no comparison. By contrast, my images from the Ektar H35N were softer, with crushed shadows and a faint ethereal glow characteristic of analog color negative films. I review photo-editing software as well as cameras, and I haven't yet found a film simulation or plug-in that can give quite the same look.

And here’s the thing. Imperfect and murky as they sometimes are, the photographs from this camera are just like the ones in the photo albums of your mum and dad, your aunts and uncles. The Kodak's images have a kind of connection with these old photos.

Have you noticed that we’ve all got pictures separated by a great digital divide, when digital cameras took over from film? Your digital photos have a clinical ’now-ness’ that separates them from these older analog photos. Does that make sense? The Kodak H35N, for all is cheapness, crudeness and its limitations, shoots in that older style, and fits right in with your analog family archives.

No, I’m not going to shoot with it every day. My photography is digital now. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating just what this cheap little Kodak does, and what it brings back that perhaps we'd forgotten.

Should you buy the Kodak Ektar H35N?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Kodak Ektar H35N

• I tested it in different lighting conditions, inside and out
• I checked the flash illumination in low light
• I assessed how well it coped with subjects near the camera
• I also checked that the film transport/rewind worked properly

I took the Kodak H35N on a series of days out and family outings, as well as testing it out in different lighting conditions at home. I used it on bright sunny days, overcast days, the gloom of late afternoon in October and even at dusk with flash.

It’s not like a digital camera where you can check to see what’s worked straight away. Instead, you have to trust in the inherent latitude of color negative film, and a big part of this test was to find out just how many prints I would lose, which makes a difference when you’re paying for developing and printing.

I tested how easy it was to load and unload films – a key point for novice analog users – and the reliability of the film advance/shutter release mechanism. I also tested the in-built flash and even the ‘star filter’, choosing shots with the sun in the frame or showing through trees.

I chose typical ‘snapshot’ subjects that families might shoot, but also the kind of compositions made popular by Lomography and its legions of analog fans. Could you really use a cheap camera like this for this kind of anti-mainstream retro-graphy?

Two-minute review

The Lomography Lomourette is a compact half-frame camera built for the fun of film photography. Lightweight, inexpensive and simple, it strips the analog shooting experience down to its creative essentials. With a fixed f/8 plastic lens, manual focus dial and two-position shutter speed lever, it’s all about finding the joy and beauty in imperfection.

In the hand, it feels every bit a toy camera. The build borders on cheap and there’s little in the way of refinement, with no aperture control or metering. What you’re getting here is a cheerful camera that embraces experimentation. The film advance wheel, for example, is independent of the shutter release, which allows for intentional or accidental double exposures.

Then you’ve got the half-frame format itself. Doubling the image count from 36 to 72, it allows you to squeeze twice the entertainment from a single roll of 35mm film, by shooting two vertical stills that sit side-by-side in the same area as a standard photo.

In use, the Lomourette can be both delightful and unpredictable. When you nail the exposure and focus distance for a given scene, it produces pleasantly grainy stills with realistic colors and surprisingly good contrast. Shot on Kodak Ultramax 400, images benefited from natural skin tones and the genuine haze of analog nostalgia, rather than a stylized recreation. The 24mm lens isn’t the sharpest, but it’s still capable of rendering impressively crisp detail and edges.

But shooting with the Lomourette also requires patience and a sense of humor. Loading film is fiddly, the focus adjustment dial is crude and the viewfinder doesn’t exactly match what the lens sees. Framing errors, light leaks and accidental overlaps are all part of the creative ride. You’re guaranteed to lose exposures along the way, usually due to under- or over-exposure. The pay-off is that the good ones capture memories with a rich, attractive look, while the happy accidents have a distinct charm of their own.

That’s not to say there aren’t frustrations. The detachable Diana+ flash is inconsistent, sometimes refusing to fire even when the ready light glows. Exposure control is entirely manual, so you’ll need to choose film that suits your shooting conditions: ISO 200 or 400 is best for bright daylight, while the Bulb mode can be used for long exposures if you’ve got a steady hand.

Ultimately, the Lomourette isn’t for perfectionists. It’s aimed at those who value spontaneity over total control. This is a budget plaything for film newcomers, experimental shooters and anyone who wants to rediscover the joy of photography without the pressure of technical mastery. It’s a low-stakes way to play with film and embrace the magic of analog unpredictability.

If you’re after a dependable film camera that delivers consistently sharp, perfectly exposed images, you’ll want to look elsewhere. But if you like the idea of a pocketable, characterful camera that makes every frame a small surprise, the Lomography Lomourette is a refreshingly care-free reminder of what makes film photography fun.

Lomography Lourette: price and availability

The Lomography Lourette costs $69 / £65 and is available now, in multiple colorways, through the Lomography website and other retailers. The Diana+ flash is bundled with the camera, as are colored gel filters.

Lomography Lomourette: specs

Lomography Lomourette: design

Compact, bright and light, the Lomography Lomourette feels more like a toy than a serious photography tool. That’s entirely the point: this is a playful analog camera that comes in on a tight budget. Like the original Diana camera of the Sixties, the Lomourette’s body and lens are made of plastic, with no frills to sweeten the deal.

There’s some rounded detailing up top and a textured effect on the main body, but little about the Lomourette feels premium. It weighs next to nothing and there’s a sense of bargain basement about the assembly. That said, it also somehow feels robust enough to survive at the bottom of a family backpack. And if it doesn’t, the low cost means you’re unlikely to lose sleep over it.

Controls here are kept deliberately simple. There’s a shutter speed lever to toggle between normal (1/60sec) and bulb for long exposures, alongside a shutter release lever to the photographer’s right. On the front of the lens is a rotating dial which can switch focus between four subject distances: 0.6m, 1-2m, 2-4m and infinity. What you don’t get is any control over the aperture. Unlike other Lomography cameras, the lens here is fixed at f/8.

On the top plate, you’ll find a mount for the Diana+ flash attachment, as well as a film advance wheel. The latter operates independently from the shutter. That means you can fire off multiple exposures on the same frame, intentionally or otherwise. It’s a creative feature, but also one of several quirks that can trip up beginners. If you don’t want fully or partially overlayed exposures, you’ll need to make sure you’ve fully wound on between shots.

The flash itself is a detachable unit powered by a single AA battery, its two prongs slotting neatly into their dedicated holes. In keeping with the camera’s pared-back personality, the flash doesn’t feature any kind of exposure or intensity control. It’s either on or off, although you do at least get a ready indicator and the option to test-fire first.

Everything is easy enough to find your way around with your fingers, even if the amount of play in the controls is testament to the cost cap. Bigger digits may also find it difficult to rotate the focus distance dial: rather than gripping the outer edge of the lens, you need to get your tips into the inner section and twist, which is easier said than done.

Loading film can also be tricky. Due to the small size of the teeth on the take-up spool, getting the film leader to catch can take a few tries. Likewise, the rewind lever needs to be perfectly aligned with the canister before the back panel and main body can be latched back together using the door switch. It all becomes a bit easier once you’re familiar with the process, but it’s a reminder that loving the Lomourette requires a little patience.

As you’d expect from a budget film camera, the viewfinder isn’t linked to the lens. This makes it easy to accidentally shoot with the lens cap still on. Even when it’s off, the viewfinder only gives a modest window for your eye to work with, and what it shows doesn’t perfectly reflect what’s being framed by the lens.

These are just some of the facets which increase the margin for error when using the Lomourette. They arguably add to its character: you can’t use it expecting the precision of a digital camera or the sophistication of a more advanced film compact. Instead, the Lomourette rewards a relaxed approach, where missed exposures and happy accidents are part of the creative process.

The half-frame format is a perfect fit for this fun-first ethos. It doubles your exposures from 36 to 72 on a standard roll of 35mm film, splitting each frame into two portrait shots. That makes it great for storytelling in pairs or simply getting more value from your film. It also makes the resulting images half the size, which helps to hide any shortcomings in the optical quality.

Lomography Lomourette: performance

Like many of Lomography’s cameras, the Lomourette is more about feel than fidelity. Yet despite its plastic lens, many of the stills it produces are real keepers. While its image quality was never going to rival that of a more serious film camera, I was pleasantly surprised by how much contrast and clarity it captured.

Shoot in bright daylight and you’ll find that the Lomourette often delivers an attractive balance of realism tinged with nostalgia. Shadows and highlights are rendered with more depth than expected, while colors come through with a surprisingly natural hue, particularly skin tones.

Shooting on Kodak Ultramax 400, I found that stills have the quality of real memories from the mind’s eye: not too tinted, just an honest – if slightly warm and fuzzy – record of the scene. It stops short of the rose-tinted romanticism you encounter with some of the best instant cameras, leaning instead into the honest, grainy character of film.

The Lomourette’s 24mm lens doesn’t resolve a huge amount of detail, but it’s not as soft as you might expect. Nail the focus distance and you can get clean, defined edges. I shot stills sharp enough that text on clothing or the rim of a coffee cup stood out clearly, even through the haze of film grain. Zoom in and there’s enough detail to crop a single half-frame for sharing or use as a phone wallpaper.

That said, consistency isn’t the Lomourette’s strong suit. Exposure can vary wildly between frames, especially when lighting conditions change. Some shots are washed out, others underexposed. That’s just part of the deal. Without a light meter, it’s down to you to read the scene and shoot according to your film and the available light. ISO 200 or 400 is a good starting point. The ‘normal’ shutter speed of 1/60sec is just about fast enough for handheld shooting in daylight. Indoors, you’ll either need to use the flash or shoot a long exposure with the bulb mode.

My hit rate was probably 60%, with the rest affected by errors. Many of these were simply too dark or blown-out to be usable. But other shots with technical issues proved to be unexpectedly artistic. For example, overlapping frames produced layered compositions that felt intentional even when they weren’t, with shadows and light streaks crossing the border between stills.

Focus adjustment is fiddly but functional. The four-step dial is imprecise and tricky to twist, but it works well enough. Even when the focus isn’t perfect, gentle blurring adds to the lo-fi aesthetic. Soft fuzz provides a patina that complements the richness of the results, with slight barrel distortion adding further character. This is a camera that celebrates imperfection.

The only real frustration was the flash. When it fired, the detachable Diana+ flashgun produced a burst of light that gave life to low-light stills, particularly close-up indoor portraits. But despite testing its functionality and ensuring the ready indicator light was lit, there were several occasions where it simply didn’t fire, resulting in wasted exposures.

For such a simple camera, the Lomourette gets you thinking about film speed and shooting conditions. It would be easy to feel frustrated by the shots lost to errors. Yet playing with it isn’t meant to be about technical perfection. If you’re willing to surrender to the process and celebrate the attractive analog shots it does yield, the Lomourette is a lot of fun to shoot with.

Should I buy the Lomography Lomourette?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the Lomography Lomourette

• Tested over two months
• Shot 1.5 rolls of film
• Used in different lighting

I used the Lomography Lomourette for two months to get a proper feel for its quirks and creative potential. During that time, I shot a full roll of ISO 400 and a partial roll of ISO 200 film. To mirror how most people are likely to use the Lomourette, I tried it both indoors and outdoors, in a variety of lighting and weather conditions.

I threw the Lomourette in a backpack for several family outings, to see how its build stacks up in everyday use. I also handed it to a six-year-old for a true test of how intuitive it is for anyone to pick up and shoot with.

I made sure to work my way through every one of the camera’s controls and settings. That meant loading it up with film and winding it on, then doing the reverse when the roll was finished. It also meant experimenting with the Diana+ flash attachment, using the camera’s bulb setting for long exposures and exploring its four-step focus to see how accurately the distance measurement affected subject sharpness in the resulting exposure.

After having the negatives developed and scanned, I reviewed every frame to evaluate color accuracy, exposure consistency and overall image quality. This approach – both analytical and holistic – gave me a genuine picture of how the Lomourette performs in the real world.

First reviewed October 2025