Hi, I’m Marian. I started onfilm photo in the summer of 2015, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with a simple idea: a meeting point for people who shoot film. Professionals and amateurs, all over the world, one photographer at a time — their photos, the cameras and film they use, and what they have learned.
Since then more than 370 photographers have shared their work here, from the United States, Germany, Italy, France, the UK, Spain, Argentina, Japan and, of course, Romania. Every story on this site was shot on film. That is the only rule.
Why film
I got my first film camera around 2014 — a Yashica — and slowly built the whole process at home: shooting, developing, scanning, and finally enlarging on paper in the dark. Ten years later I still prefer black and white, an Olympus OM-1 and a Hasselblad 500C, and the moment when a print appears in the tray. I also run a small film lab in Cluj, so I have seen a few hundred thousand frames from other people pass through the machines. Film is not a filter. It is a way of paying attention.
What happened in 2026
In June 2026 the old site was hacked. I rebuilt onfilm photo from scratch in a day, on a stack that cannot be hacked the same way, and used the occasion to re-tag every one of the 440 stories by camera, film stock, format and place. The archive is now the cleanest it has ever been. New stories are coming again, and the newsletter works.
What is next
I am working on ways to make film real again for people, not only on a screen: hands-on sessions where you shoot a roll, develop it and make a print the same day; small printed editions of the work published here; and a place — sometimes in Cluj, sometimes on the road, maybe in Valencia — where all of that can happen. If you want to hear about it first, subscribe. If you shoot film and want to be featured, send a story.
You can find me on Instagram at @el_marianchi_, and onfilm photo at @onfilm.photo.