Shooting a Roll of Lomography Redscale
Heads-up, this is a film / photography post, so the regular warnings and reassurance apply, this is not entirely about urbanism, but there will be more in the future, so read on with that in mind.
That warning said, I would suppose that there is an urbanist element to this though, as my favourite photo shooting style is street photography and my most common subject matter is downtown Victoria. On of the key things that draws me to street photography is much the same as what draws me to writing articles about Victoria, and that is trying to give people a sense of how I see the city. In some ways, photography is an easier pathway, because I get to put exactly what I want into the frame and choose what I want to be in focus within the frame.
I have been trying to put more effort into my photography over the last few years. In particular, I have been trying to get faster, while still creating an interesting composition. While I have an excellent digital camera in my trusty Fujifilm XT2, the way that I think that I actually get better as a photographer, has been shooting with film (currently with my Nikon FE). Shooting with film is more challenging in that you don’t get to see the results right away and it can also get expensive. Both of these things are removed in shooting digital, but it is precisely these two challenges that make film the perfect medium to force you to focus on what you are doing. Knowing that each shutter press has a cost and that you won’t know if it was worth the cost until you get it developed means that you slow down and take more care with your shooting. Checking and rechecking exposure and pausing just a little longer on framing before pressing down.
Last year I wrote a post on two the two Lomography Lomochrome films and shared some of the results. I back with another film by Lomography called Redscale. Redscale is essentially regular colour negative film that has been loaded into the canister backwards to take advantage of a layer of the film used to protect the image from stray light. When reversed and shot through first, this layer effectively acts as a sort of red filter for the film. So it is not really a colour shift film like Lomochrome Purple.
I saw that Camera Traders had brought in some Redscale and really didn’t know anything about it so watched a bunch of Youtube videos and went down and got a three-pack of the film to try out. Redscale, like the two Lomochrome films is ISO-variant, meaning you get different results when shot at different exposures. Specifically, this film can be shot anywhere from 50 to 200 ISO. I shot this first roll at 50 ISO, which did limit me a little as to what I could shoot, because I needed a lot of light. I think that when I shoot the next one I am going to try it at a little higher ISO, as I did find this roll a little monotonous in the red that it presented, but that is the fun of film in that each time you are trying a new film you are effectively both experimenting and learning something about it.
I think that using this film in an urban setting really works in a way like shooting black and white because the lines and shading are the keys rather than the colour differentials you may see in other colour film. That it is not all monotone, at least in this roll. Reds are deeply saturated as you expect, but greens and blues also push through. I think again for the next roll apart from raising the ISO, I will also focus more on compositions that pull in more of those cool colours to see what happens. When I went out, the idea of the film drew me to red, which again may have been a little too much. Still overall I am happy with how the roll turned out. If you shoot film, I would highly recommend heading down to Camera Traders and picking up a roll before it is all gone.
Have a look through the pictures and let me know what you think (you can navigate through the pictures with the arrows on the sides). I would also love to hear from readers on how they feel about the inclusion of the occasional photography post. I am tagging them separately and specifically as photography, so if you use any of the search tags on the site you can ignore them (or focus on them). Either way let me know if the comments or as always, feel free to send me an email direct at SidewalkingVictoria@gmail.com