Experimental film brings unexpected results, so in that sense this week was a success. What was not a success was producing any photographs worth keeping, but it's all for fun at the end of the day!
I had bought the Revelog 460nm film a while ago, and wanted to save it for a week where I had no specific theme in mind. The funny thing was that I did have a theme for this week's shots: "Planes trains, and automobiles", just that the results were more quirky than I had anticipated!
For a recent trip to London I figured I would get plenty of opportunities to shoot these subjects and it would look even cooler with experimental film. My photo lab did not agree: "this film was a whole catastrophe". And I cannot really blame them, it seems the scanning was a nightmare too. However, the good news is that I did get some shots of some planes and automobiles, not sure where my train shots went.
The film
Revelog 460nm belongs to the Revelog family of films, all highly experimental with whacky results - for example lightning bolts or hearts being added onto the negative strip. The 460nm version was a bit more subdued and I thought fair enough I will give it a go, so according to Revelog:
This effect changes the colour of the picture. Depending on where it is developed (hence which scanning software is used), the picture will either have a greenish/yellow colour or a violet/blue tint. Underexposure makes the effect stronger, whereas overexposure dampens it.)
35mm colour negative film, 36 exposures ISO / ASA 200
So with the above in mind, I thought "great! I will get really cool dark and bright airplane shots", but the results came out a bit differently than I had expected!
My first shot. It seems underexposing makes everything a blue / purple tint, interesting as this scene was very bright.
Despite being so underexposed, I actually quite like this shot - it looks very aged and could be 50 years ago.
I think some of the frames are intentionally crossed over with other frames, for example the Frankfurt car shot (above) mixed in with an airport shot - how very strange. No wonder the lab got exasperatedwhen trying to scan this film.
I had overexposed some of these shots on purpose to see how they came out, I think this was one of them although it still looks very underexposed but seems to have a green tint to it rather than blue.
Another crossed over frames shot - bizarre.
Actually a half decent shot, if it were not so underexposed. By the way Frankfurt airport has some great scenes where you practially go right under airplanes - really good for photography!
Well, given my theme was planes, trains, automobiles - at least I got 2 buses in 1 frame here!
Randomly a really old Mercedes with a Madrid license plate right next to my brothers house in London.
Underexposed mess - with an airplane in the middle!
Frankfurt airport.
The closest I got to "trains" in my theme - with an underground shot in Frankfurt!
Overall impressions
I always knew this roll of film would produce some whacky results, I just did not think so many of the shots would be so unusable. I have used experimental film before and there is quite a following of Redscale film (hence everything has red tints to it), but I would probably recommend sticking with the much cheaper option of buying expired film if you want to get results similar to the above.
This project is all about trying what's out there in the market, and there are a good few experimental films available. I think these films are fine for those people who like to have fun and take random shots, but for me the price point of this film is too high for the results it provides. I cannot say I will be stocking any of this in my fridge for future use, but I am glad at least I tried it out. I am also quite relieved my photographs aren't both underexposed and have lightning bolts on them (or whatever other random effect has been added to some of these films).
So there you have it, not everything turns out as expected, and that's both OK and a good thing!That being said, I do have some experimental redscale film coming up - I hope those results are more pleasing than this week!
I hope you enjoyed the randomness of this week's film, see you next time!
Neil
