Redscale challenge...

ChrisR

ChrisR

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I've got a 3-pack of (expired) Lomography redscale, 36 shot. It says the ISO rating is 50-200. The packet says "Different exposure settings produce different results. Rate the film at ISO 200 for super-intense red and orange colours; rate it at ISO 50 to mix additional tones of blue and green into your image."

Any suggestions for appropriate circumstances to try it? And does anyone fancy a "redscale challenge"?
 
I think there are two different versions of the Lomography Redscale films; I have a 120 three-pack of "Lomography Redscale XR 50-250"; the other version has a rating of ISO100.

I shot the first roll at ISO100 and the results were disappointing with poorer image quality than I had previously experienced with home-rolled 35mm redscaled film. There were several blue scratches and a mottled appearance. Two other films developed in the same reel were fine.

The scratches may be due to excessive handling both while loading the film and loading the reel. At first I attempted to load the film into a Fujifilm GA645Zi, which winds on automatically until the correct position. However the camera just kept on winding until the whole roll had gone through - same for a second film. I assume the Fuji camera depends upon reading a bar code which isn't there on the Lomo film. Rather than waste a third film, I went into the darkroom to re-roll the film and put in a Yashicamat instead.

When I came to load the film onto the developing reel, it was difficult to load and I had to re-cut the end to smooth it. Perhaps I should have flipped it over so that the curve was going the same way as normal.

My eperience with redscaled 35mm film is that +1 stop from box speed gives a deep red cast which looks like sunset or maybe under-exposed, +2 stops give an orange cast, and +3 stops give a yellow cast. It is very easy to re-roll 35mm to get it the right way round for redscale; doing that with 120 is a little harder because of the need to avoid buckling the film as you roll it up.

Here's one with DIY redscaled expired Kodak Gold, which I got for £2 for six rolls:


99 red balloons ? by Kevin Allan, on Flickr

And this one is redscaled Poundland film put through a Mamiya RZ67:

Side Ways by Kevin Allan, on Flickr
 
Now that I've moved to a different PC I can upload samples from the problematic roll of 120 Lomo Redscale XR 50-200 I referred to in the previous message:

2017-03-28, Yashicamat, Lomo Redscale, North Shields, 001.jpg

2017-03-28, Yashicamat, Lomo Redscale, North Shields, 003.jpg

2017-03-28, Yashicamat, Lomo Redscale, North Shields, 005.jpg

2017-03-28, Yashicamat, Lomo Redscale, North Shields, 010.jpg

2017-03-28, Yashicamat, Lomo Redscale, North Shields, 011.jpg

These were shot at ISO100, around mid-day

I think redscale works best with images which have a bold subject matter - a detailed pastoral English landscape may not be the best subject but urban scenes work better.
 
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Thanks Kevin. Yes, the last few definitely work better, though I find the Poundland example strangely compelling!
 
Kevin Allan said:
I think there are two different versions of the Lomography Redscale films; I have a 120 three-pack of "Lomography Redscale XR 50-250"; the other version has a rating of ISO100.

I shot the first roll at ISO100 and the results were disappointing with poorer image quality than I had previously experienced with home-rolled 35mm redscaled film. There were several blue scratches and a mottled appearance. Two other films developed in the same reel were fine.

The scratches may be due to excessive handling both while loading the film and loading the reel. At first I attempted to load the film into a Fujifilm GA645Zi, which winds on automatically until the correct position. However the camera just kept on winding until the whole roll had gone through - same for a second film. I assume the Fuji camera depends upon reading a bar code which isn't there on the Lomo film. Rather than waste a third film, I went into the darkroom to re-roll the film and put in a Yashicamat instead.

When I came to load the film onto the developing reel, it was difficult to load and I had to re-cut the end to smooth it. Perhaps I should have flipped it over so that the curve was going the same way as normal.

My eperience with redscaled 35mm film is that +1 stop from box speed gives a deep red cast which looks like sunset or maybe under-exposed, +2 stops give an orange cast, and +3 stops give a yellow cast. It is very easy to re-roll 35mm to get it the right way round for redscale; doing that with 120 is a little harder because of the need to avoid buckling the film as you roll it up.

Here's one with DIY redscaled expired Kodak Gold, which I got for £2 for six rolls:


99 red balloons ? by Kevin Allan, on Flickr

And this one is redscaled Poundland film put through a Mamiya RZ67:

Side Ways by Kevin Allan, on Flickr
Click to expand...

I love that balloon shot. It's like a colour plate from an old Jules Verne novel.
 
i must admit i had to google redscale film. thats a new one on me. a whole new meaning to "exposing the rear":eek:
 
mothdust said:
I love the effect Redscale gives - I'm planning on re-spooling some of my stock of Poundland film soon! I ran a roll of the Lomography stuff through their DIY Konstructor camera, for maximum probability of weird photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bombsandmonitors/albums/72157676761889804

There's also this cool effect, where you expose both sides at a time: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hodachrome/albums/72157630415983186
Click to expand...

Interesting, Charlotte. How do people get the second set of exposures so precisely aligned?
 
I had to google it as well - I thought Lomography Redscale was some repurposed specialist film. Sounds interesting, and just the thing for using up some expired film. I just reverse-spooled a couple of Vista 200 36-exp rolls.
 
Nomad Z said:
I had to google it as well - I thought Lomography Redscale was some repurposed specialist film. Sounds interesting, and just the thing for using up some expired film. I just reverse-spooled a couple of Vista 200 36-exp rolls.
Click to expand...

Just like that! Well, I'll be interested to see the results... :)
 
ChrisR said:
And does anyone fancy a "redscale challenge"?
Click to expand...

No-one commented or accepted, but nevertheless I'm proposing a redscale challenge! get yourself some Lomo or Rollei redscale or re-roll some C41 colour film backwards like @NomadZ has done. It'll probably be only a short-run thing, so I don't see a problem in adding the pics on here...

Come on guys, I know you can do it. @RaglanSurf even won an award with some redscale!
 
I'm in, Chris! Any excuse for faffing about with some alternative processes!
 
I'm in. I'm currently 1 roll into a 3-pack of Redscale 120. It's... interesting.
The first roll I rated at iso25 in my 6x7 having seen the effects of under (more red) and over exposure (less red) online.
As well as the differences speed makes I also saw big differences in the scan I got along with the dev and my own scans of the better frames.
Normally when I scan c41 I'll keep border of film around the frame. This makes an easy white balance start to remove the rusty cast of the film. This doesn't work so well with redscale as the colours have already been filtered through the rusty red film. I found that scanning inside the frame gave me a better colour. But we are far into the subjective end of colour and effects here, my 'better' could well be your 'rubbish' ;)

auto/commercial scan- lots of blue in the shadows


my scan- cropped inside film image frame=less blue
 
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That's really interesting, Lee; presumably the same film scanned two different ways; the same T-shirt as well?

I guess in the case of redscale, "accurate colour" is not really the point, compared (say) with "interesting". Both pics definitely are interesting, but even more interesting is the juxtaposition.
 
ChrisR said:
That's really interesting, Lee; presumably the same film scanned two different ways; the same T-shirt as well?

I guess in the case of redscale, "accurate colour" is not really the point, compared (say) with "interesting". Both pics definitely are interesting, but even more interesting is the juxtaposition.
Click to expand...

Yes, these images were taken seconds apart.
The more blue image is a lovely, sharp, low noise jpeg from FilmDev and the other is a tif from an epson v700 scanned and edited by me.

I'm not a fan of the very red redscale look, but when I first looked into redscale film I found these images that got me interested in rating it even slower than the iso50-200 on the box: http://pollypasserdomesticus.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/lomography-redscale-xr-50-200-rated-at.html?m=1 There's still a huge colour shift, but the over-exposure has toned down the nuclear-red to a very nice effect.

For the sake of experimenting, I'm working through a second roll in my No. 2 Brownie. Over-exposure shouldn't be a problem as long as the sun comes out!
 
ChrisR said:
No-one commented or accepted, but nevertheless I'm proposing a redscale challenge! get yourself some Lomo or Rollei redscale or re-roll some C41 colour film backwards like @NomadZ has done. It'll probably be only a short-run thing, so I don't see a problem in adding the pics on here...

Come on guys, I know you can do it. @RaglanSurf even won an award with some redscale!
Click to expand...
I'll try and give it a go although I'm struggling to keep up to date with the FPOTY, the postcard challenge and I have to get organised for World Pinhole Photography Day on the 30th http://pinholeday.org/
 
I hadn't forgotten about this, but I only got the scans back today for the roll of Redscale XR 50-200 that I put through my Brownie No.2
I tried to rate it at iso25 to get more than just red in the images. AND, I forgot about the Brownie having at least a 10' fixed focus point, so they're all keepers for reference only :/

Straight FilmDev scan:


LR edits: WB set via grey pompom on hat and minor shadow, highlight etc tweaks.

This giving an interesting effect that I prefer to the full blown nuclear redscale effect.

I'll update this when I get the negs back and try scanning myself with and without the film rebate in the scan as mentioned above somewhere.
 
I like those! Can't decide between the colours of the first or second though...
 
Curiouser and curioser.... I got the negs back and I've been investigating.
Epson v700, Epson software, 24-bit Colour Negative Film...
Oversized scan to include film rebate:

Undersized scan to exclude film rebate:


So it seems that the scanning software is making a pretty good guess at removing the base/rebate colour, and only adds a bunch of green when there dark orange reabte in the shot.
Also, this frame in particular was a long ~6sec exposure so will have over exposed a lot. In fact, too much in my opinion, as the redscale effect is gone and the colours are heading towards generic "old film"

Looking through other shots on the role, this one is a better balance of redscale/colour shift for me.

Looking closely the darks and blacks in this frame have a density that match the rebate (the previous shot above needs work to bring pure black in to the frame)
If I use the white clouds for WB this time I get, I think, a much nicer effect: shifted colours with a hint of the real colours still there.


...and with a few minor tweaks it's heading towards why I picked started over-exposing the redscale in the first place!


Conclusions?
1. I like redscale film that's over exposed, but not too much, so I'll aim for iso40-50 with the last role of my 3-pack.
2. White balancing the scans digitally can give a very nice effect and colour shift.
3. Scanning with/without film rebate will have a varying effect dependig on the the density of the neg - which links back to under/over exposure (See 1.)
4. I need to tape a focus distance reminder to that Brownie!
 
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Brought my redscale to Cornwall, still hoping to use it...
 
So, I didn't shoot any redscale in Cornwall, far too much nice stuff to shoot with proper film! But straight after coming back, I did pop a roll of Lomo Redscale in the camera and went out for a wander. I sot the first 12 frames at 200, the next 12 at 100, and the last shots at 50. It was interesting to see the differences... although some of the 50 shots looked rather similar to some of the 100 or 200 shots.

I must say when I got the results back from Filmdev, I was under-whelmed. They have sat on my hard drive since then. I've gone back over them in the last few days, and there are a few that are, well, ok. Not something I'm higely happy about, but interesting. The best thing about them often seems to be the sky, which is perhaps consistent with the effects we see with a red filter and a black and white film.

These are shot at 200...

R10-06528-0002 by Chris R, on Flickr

R10-06528-0008 by Chris R, on Flickr

R10-06528-0010 by Chris R, on Flickr

I'll put some more in a second post.
 
I meant to shoot the same shots at each different ISO setting, but didn't achieve that. These two shots were similar, first at 200, then at 100. It's not clear now how much the conditions had changed, however.

Redscale laburnum 1.jpg

Redscale laburnum 2.jpg

Not directly a propos of these two, I noted that shadow areas are relatively darker than with normal film, specially green shadows! Composition with redscale, as you can see, is an art that is so far eluding me (I mean in terms of making a shot that really benefits from the redscale rather than merely coping with it). Someone somewhere (above?) said you want some striking shapes, which I suspect is true.

I have two more rolls, but at the moment I'm struggling to think when or why I might want to use them! I guess the expiry date (past) is not an issue since they're so darn quirky anyway.
 
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