Hello friends!! It’s been a little while since I did an out and out film review but fear not!! Today I shall make amends for this by giving the first of THREE (that’s right THREE) film reviews - gosh aren’t you lucky (don’t answer that)! These were all brand new films to me that I hadn’t used before each with their own unique look, so while they may have been shot on the same shoot they definitely have their own story to tell. First up we’ll begin with some purple otherwordly strangeness in the form of Lomography Lomochrome Purple XR 100-400 (my goodness what a mouthful)!!
I’ve had a couple of rolls on ice for some time and so with Lockdown restrictions easing here in the UK making photoshoots ‘a thing’ again I defrosted one roll and loaded it up into my Nikon L35AF point and shoot which accompanied me on a shoot with the very talented Monika - check her out on IG for more evidence of her awesomeness!!
As you can see Lomochrome Purple does exactly what it says on the tin - Blue becomes green, green becomes purple, yellow becomes pink! It’s an effect that is possibly as near to shooting old school aerochrome colour infrared that us mere mortals will get these days (proper colour IR film is STUPID expensive) what I love about the film is it can introduce an entirely new angle on a shoot - alongside the Lomochrome I shot some ‘normal colour’ film stocks but it was great to have this additional creative film along for the ride.
According to the box this film can be shot anywhere between 100 and 400, but looking around online I think it’s best to stick to the 100 side of things as this will give you the most pronounced purple colour shifts, of course your mileage may vary but this film isn’t cheap and I very definitely erred on the side of caution with my metering!
These were taken on a very bright sunlit day - in fact I had a reflector with me that I didn’t use and I wish that I had for one or two of these a: to balance the hard shadows and b: to give the film some extra light to work with - as you can see this film does not record shadow detail very well and the drop off is quite pronounced, that being said but I do kind of like the effect in the background elements as it gives you quite a punchy, contrasty look but I thinkI’d have liked to have kept some more detail around Monika as my subject!
The grain structure is visible and I quite like it. The film resolves quite a lot of detail especially in the highlights and where it does fall off the grain has a gritty feel - this is most definitely not a smooth film so be prepared to embrace the grain! What I did notice in the film scans and I confirmed this with Exposure Film Lab who developed the film for me was quite a few thin lines across the image possibly from dye running off through the development, it was easy to remove in lightroom but certainly expect to do a bit of post processing removing weird artefacts in Photoshop or Lightroom (I felt like a digital shooter for a minute)! UURGH!
I picked the above image out as it shows a few things worth taking note of:
1: This was probably the most extreme example of the lines that were apparent on more than a few frames
2: My sadness at the big bloody STUPID line spoiling the shot was lessened because clearly the little Nikon L35AF wasn’t feeling the strong backlighting here (even though it has a little lever to compensate for back lighting) clearly there are limits to what you can expect - and in this situation you can expect to see a big increase in grain and lack of contrast
3: Which moves onto point number three - The lomo purple clearly didn’t enjoy this lighting either - you can see the purple shifting to a more muddy, muted, brownish colour, and the grain structure kind of falls apart a bit too and loses contrast - meh!
I tried my best to make the most of the greenery around, at the time of the shoot most of the trees were still bare but there was enough evergreen ivy around for us to work with and Monika did a great job of diving into the spiky Ivy branches! Skin tones were very much on the pinky/red side of things despite Lomographys assertions that this film keeps skin tones looking natural but to be honest my advice is to just embrace the colour shifts and go with it, I really love how these shots came out - Lomochrom Purple is a great way to add an instant creative edge to a shoot and works well when shot alongside some more traditional colour/black and white stocks.
So in conclusion then what can we say about Lomography Lomochrome XR 100-400 (aside from the ridic long name) well my completely subjective and unscientific analysis is: I absolutely love it! (‘What a fucking surprise’ I hear you cry)!! Fair comment - I am yet to meet a film stock that I didn’t fall in love with one way or the other…. although with this one I was especially uncertain with it being such an unusual film to begin with and then first time shooting it.
One of the things that I enjoy about film photography is that many of your creative choices are made up front when it comes to choosing films stocks etc Lomo Purple gives you a really ‘out there’ trippy vibe right off the bat. It’s not a cheap film and based on my experience it really does need good lighting so while I have another roll on ice, I’ll be waiting for the right opporutnity to bring it out. I have to say that it was great shooting the little Nikon L35AF loaded up with this bonkers film - a great little camera that will have a blog of its own one day I promise!!
Would i use Lomo Purple as a stand alone film stock for a portrait shoot? No… I feel it’s more of a creative addition to your colour pallete rather than the main focus or at least that’s how I used it, which brings us nicely to a reminder to watch this space for parts 2 and 3 of this film review trilogy - I’ll be bringin you another Lomo film this time a more traditional stock Lomography colour 100 in medium format! I bet you can’t wait…. but you’ll have to, I haven’t written the damn thing yet…