About us

In early 2020, Zone Imaging’s founder, James Lane, started off the company as a bespoke film processing lab, called Zone Imaging Lab, where he wanted to go beyond others for specialised tailored results through photochemistry and custom developments of film. This was possible through studying directly under or indirectly from retired Kodak/Ilford engineers and photo-chemists or respected independents of the trade for a few years previously.

As COVID lockdown hit, he started modifying black and white developers. This further progressed to experimenting to make his own black and white developers after sparking a friendship with some photochemical tinkerers: Jay DeFehr, Rudiger Hartung and Daniel Keating.

At Zone Imaging, we wanted to contribute to the film photography resurgence and the evolution of the film photography industry through another aspect than other start-ups by photochemistry. Thus our vision was to bring actual new developers to the commercial market that would be more environmentally friendly than the traditional ones already available, where possible, with the added bonus of giving advancements in technical results and breakthroughs in the science. Through the introduction of our first product, 510 Pyro, this side of the company was born.

Since then, we have grown as a company to have more dedicated employees: a R&D chemical engineer, Khoa, working on future products, and a manufacturing chemist, George.