Frank launch date set to 31 July

Developing motion picture film at home has been stuck since the 1980s. The Lomo tank that most people know went out of production decades ago, and the ones still in circulation are not getting any younger. Beyond that, there has never been an affordable way to develop colour reliably at home without a processor that costs several thousand euros.

Frank changes that. And on 31 July, it launches on Indiegogo.

The full campaign details, pricing and rewards are further down. First, here is where Frank stands. The design is finished. A prototype has been out in the hands of a tester, and it came back with notes. The campaign video is being filmed.

The design

Frank is a standalone film processor for Super 8, Double 8 and 16 mm. It handles black-and-white, C-41, E-6, ECN-2 and ECP, which is everything a filmmaker, a wedding shooter or a film school is likely to put through it. You pour the chemistry. Frank does the agitation, the timing and the temperature compensation.

Frank features a vertical reel system that can be configured to process either 2 × 50 ft of 8 mm film or 2 × 50 ft of 16 mm film. Regardless of the reel configuration, the processor uses 1 litre of chemistry and runs continuous rotary processing, where the film rotates through the chemicals rather than remaining fully submerged. That is what lets us use so little of it.

The enclosure combines ABS-GF, glass-fibre reinforced ABS, with stainless steel components. We chose it for mechanical strength, for good resistance to most photographic chemicals, and because the glass fibre gives a far more refined surface finish than standard 3D-printed plastic.

Here is the finished look.

A question came in from the community recently that lands on exactly this.

"Is the production version going to be 3D printed? What material do you plan to use, and is it resistant to strong bleaches like dichromate ones?"

Yes, the main body is 3D printed from ABS-GF. But ABS on its own will not stand up to the aggressive bleach solutions used in black-and-white reversal processing, such as R-9 dichromate bleach, or potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid bleach.

That mattered to us. Reversal processing comes up constantly, and projecting film you developed yourself is a large part of why people shoot cine at all. So every internal surface of the tank that touches chemistry is coated with a chemically resistant epoxy resin. It adds a manufacturing step. It also means those bleaches stop being a problem.

User testing

We put one of the first Frank prototypes in the hands of a local 16 mm enthusiast whose previous experience had been exclusively with the Lomo tank. We asked him to use Frank as he normally would, and to be honest about it. Here are a few of his observations.

Size. Frank is a little larger than a Lomo tank. The whole processor has to fit inside a changing bag during loading, so budget for a bigger changing bag than the one you own.

Reel loading. What he liked most was being able to touch the lower reel while loading. You can feel the film feeding and fix a mistake the moment it happens, instead of finding it after development. He also liked the shaft support, which holds the reel in place while still letting it turn. Spooling came out better than with the Lomo.

Pouring and draining. This was the biggest improvement over the Lomo. Filling and draining each take about 20 to 30 seconds for a litre of chemistry, and both are cleaner. Nothing gets lifted or tilted. It drains straight into the sink.

The interface. He had never used a processor like this before and still found Frank easy to run. The timer, the automated rotation, the process step timings and the notifications all sit in a single interface, so the whole development runs off one screen instead of a stopwatch in one hand and a chart in the other.

Time compensation. He measured his chemistry at 20°C. Inside the processor it drifted up to almost 21°C, and Frank shortened the remaining development time to match. He did not have to do anything, or even notice it happening.

That last one is worth spelling out, because it is the whole point. Frank does not heat your chemistry. It reads the real temperature throughout the process and adjusts development time to match what is actually happening inside the tank, rather than asking you to hit a number and hold it there for ten minutes. Pre-warm your chemistry in a water bath, measure it, pour it in. Frank handles the drift from there.

None of that is new or unproven. The same time compensation engine has been running in our AGO processors for two and a half years, in the hands of over 3,000 photographers. Frank is that engine, rebuilt for motion picture film. It automates everything except the pours.

One more thing on the way. We will be publishing scans of E-6 and C-41 rolls developed in Frank shortly, so you can judge the results rather than take our word for them.

The thing we had not planned to build, but will

Somewhere in development, a question came up. If we are going to invest in injection-moulded reels for Frank, and we fully expect to, why not also build a dedicated daylight tank that takes exactly the same reel?

After all, the market has very few options for processing 8 mm and 16 mm motion picture film. The Lomo has been out of production for decades and the surviving ones are not getting any younger. For many people just getting started, a Frank processor is a bigger investment than they are ready to make.

So we are building one. We call it Frankie, or Fränkie, the little sibling to Frank. It is a new tank and a new reel, a modern replacement for the Lomo. It is a more affordable way in, and because it uses the same reel system, nothing you buy gets stranded. Start with Frankie and process by hand, agitating and timing exactly as you would with a Lomo. If you later decide to automate, the reel moves straight into Frank.

Why we are doing this now

Interest in analogue has not stopped at still photography. Kodak released a new Super 8 camera in 2024, the first in over thirty years, and shipped it to a waitlist thousands of people long. Wedding videographers are selling Super 8 as a premium add-on. A new generation is finding the format through social media rather than film school.

What has not moved is the infrastructure for developing any of it at home. That is still roughly where it was in the 1980s. It is the gap Frank is built to close.

The Indiegogo campaign

The campaign opens on 31 July and runs until 12 September.

We should be straight with you about the price. Now that the final bill of materials is in, Frank's retail price is €1,281, up from the €1,185 we published when the project began. What has not changed is what that covers. Shipping worldwide, DDP and VAT are all in it, wherever you are. Nothing gets added at checkout.

The campaign is where it costs less, and the earlier you back, the better the price. Here is the shape of it. The campaign numbers we are keeping back until launch day.

Here is the one number we will give you now. The first 20 backers get Frank for under €900. Early Bird is limited: 20 Frank processors, 20 Frankies and 5 bundles, and once they are gone the price steps up. The full campaign pricing goes live when the campaign opens on 31 July.

Frank ships with one 2 × 50 ft reel, Frankie is a tank and reel together, and the bundle is both plus two reels.

The goal, and why we need you

Our funding goal is €20,000. That is what turns a finished design into a production run.

Past that, two stretch goals upgrade the hardware for everyone:

• €50,000. The reel moves from 3D printed to injection moulded. Tighter tolerances, smoother loading.
• €100,000. The Frankie tank moves to injection moulded too.

Every reward ships 3D printed at launch. These are not tiers that buy one backer a better version. They upgrade the whole run, including the unit with your name on it.

Spread the word

If you know someone who shoots cine film, a school with a darkroom and no way to teach colour, or a forum where this belongs, send them this post. The share buttons are just below and they cost you ten seconds. For a project this size, one share from the right person does more than anything we could buy.

If you would rather talk to us directly, we are in our Discord most days, and there is a comment box at the bottom of this page. Ask us the hard questions. The bleach one above came from exactly that, and it changed how we build the machine.

Disclaimer

Fränk is Vintage Visual's own product name for this film processor, chosen independently and without connection to any other individual, lab, or business. It carries no endorsement, involvement, or affiliation from anyone else in the film community.