Blue becomes green, green becomes purple, yellow becomes magenta, and red and white stay true to color. That’s Lomography Lomochrome Purple XR 100-400 film in a nutshell. It gives an otherworldly look to your images, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not, but it was interesting to try this film anyway just to see what turned out.
Lomography has improved this film at least once; the latest is “the 2019 emulsion,” but because I didn’t hang onto the box I don’t know which version this is. I shot it in my Olympus XA2, which I slipped into the pannier on my bike. All of these photos are from various bike rides this summer.
Someone gave me this film several years ago. It was a little bit expired by the time I got around to shooting it, and I’d stored it at room temperature the whole time, so it’s possible that these images don’t look the same as they would have when the film was fresh.
Here’s my favorite photo from the roll, of a lovely old home on a country road in Boone County, Indiana.
This photo of a boutique’s entrance in Zionsville looks almost like it was shot on normal film.
Here’s my blue bike on a pedestrian bridge in Zionsville.
This photo isn’t terribly interesting, but it does show that this film renders white as white.
I don’t like how Lomochrome Purple renders a deep blue sky as a sickly blue-green.
I got a lot of that blue-green sky in my images as I shot largely on clear days. I like how red things look normal against the otherwise alien landscape.
I made the photo below on a hazy but bright day, which turned the sickly skies to white.
The XA2 flared when aimed even partly toward the sun. This is new behavior; it never used to do this.
I didn’t love Lomochrome Purple. But I liked it a lot better than the company’s Redscale film, a roll of which I shot last year. That film just tinted everything red. At least it was interesting to see how this film rendered various colors.
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