--- title: Making GIFs from 35mm film photography | daily.dev description: A fun, deliberately over-engineered process for creating an animated GIF from scratch using analog photography. The workflow involves shooting 4-frame... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/making-gifs-from-35mm-film-photography-kcsmcwb46 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Making GIFs from 35mm film photography | daily.dev og:description: A fun, deliberately over-engineered process for creating an animated GIF from scratch using analog photography. The workflow involves shooting 4-frame... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/making-gifs-from-35mm-film-photography-kcsmcwb46 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kcsMCwB46.png og:image:alt: Making GIFs from 35mm film photography og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Making GIFs from 35mm film photography **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A fun, deliberately over-engineered process for creating an animated GIF from scratch using analog photography. The workflow involves shooting 4-frame sequences on a Lomo ActionSampler plastic film camera, home-developing the 35mm film, digitizing frames by photographing them on an LED light panel, processing RAW files in Affinity, manually cropping and aligning frames, and finally combining them into a GIF using ImageMagick. Tween frames are generated by blending adjacent frames at 50% opacity to smooth out the 4fps animation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 15 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-07-24). **TL;DR:** The community appreciates the nostalgic charm of developing film and the quirky old camera, but HN commenters playfully mock the 'hardest way to make a GIF' framing since the digital steps relied entirely on existing tools like ImageMagick. **Sentiment:** 35% positive · 45% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - Developing film and watching images appear in a darkroom is described as a uniquely magical experience. - The use of a rare four-frame camera is seen as genuinely cool and nostalgic. **The pushback** - Using ImageMagick and modern image editors contradicts the 'hardest way' premise, since those are other people's programs. - Commenters jokingly expected a truly hardcore approach, like building the GIF by hand from the spec or implementing LZW compression from scratch. **By community** - lobsters (positive): Lobsters commenters found the process cool and nostalgic, with one saying it inspired them to dig out a family film camera. - hackernews (mixed): HN commenters enjoyed the concept and film-developing magic but ribbed the author for calling it the 'hardest way' while relying on off-the-shelf tools for the digital steps. **Hottest debate:** Whether using ImageMagick and modern image editors is consistent with the post's claim of making a GIF 'the hardest way.' **Open questions** - What would a genuinely 'hardest way' GIF pipeline look like end-to-end without any third-party software? **Highlights** > > I could send the film off to a lab for developing and scanning, but this is the hardest way to make a GIF. … using multiple programs written by other people… > — [zahlman on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019538) > Indeed, I've never developed my own film but I do respect it entails a fair bit of effort, and the funky old camera is cool. But scanning, cropping using one of the latest image editors, then running it through imagemagick does not feel like the hardest way to make a gif. > — [hereonout2 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040850) > Developing film is such a beautiful kind of magic. Watching the image appear in a darkroom before your eyes is a very unique experience. > — [adzm on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040952) > Cool process and the results are really nostalgic. I’d never heard of that four frame camera before. I recently pulled my grandpa’s old Canon AE-1 out of storage and this was an inspiring post. > — [mbil on lobsters · 3 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/ewh4v6/making_gifs_from_35mm_film_photography#c_k4zama) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/ewh4v6/making_gifs_from_35mm_film_photography) · 50 points · 2 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019472) · 2 points · 2 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49032126) · 2 points · 11 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [help i accidentally a wigglegram](https://daily.dev/posts/help-i-accidentally-a-wigglegram-2zlbcboyf) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [180 Shots On A Roll With The Little Stupid Camera](https://daily.dev/posts/180-shots-on-a-roll-with-the-little-stupid-camera-yf93de3u2) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Using Camera Tricks in Blender to Create a Liminal Dreamcore Scene](https://daily.dev/posts/using-camera-tricks-in-blender-to-create-a-liminal-dreamcore-scene-pw1evahym) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [0dd Company](https://daily.dev/posts/0dd-company-9mcqym3mu) · Hacker News · 21 upvotes · 2 comments - [I Built a Browser-Based Image Animation Engine That Makes Any Picture “Wobble”](https://daily.dev/posts/i-built-a-browser-based-image-animation-engine-that-makes-any-picture-wobble--mz68efosh) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#image-processing](https://daily.dev/tags/image-processing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/making-gifs-from-35mm-film-photography-kcsmcwb46) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Making GIFs from 35mm film photography","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/making-gifs-from-35mm-film-photography-kcsmcwb46","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/making-gifs-from-35mm-film-photography-kcsmcwb46"},"datePublished":"2026-07-24T12:40:42.996Z","dateModified":"2026-07-24T22:11:38.675Z","description":"A fun, deliberately over-engineered process for creating an animated GIF from scratch using analog photography. 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