Lomochrome Purple with the Canon Ql17
I have mixed feelings about Lomochrome Purple which matches the mixed results I’ve gotten. Perhaps my expectations of achieving a look along the lines of an infrared film are at fault but it’s also the fact that it doesn’t appear to shift in colour in quite the way Lomography suggests. You can see from the chart I did to go with my first post how the colours shift Lomochrome Purple. I like how deep blues turn cyan and yellows turn a pink but I’m frustrated by the lack of shift I have achieved with green the one colour I had the highest hope for. I will have to rethink the way I use this film if I do again. Choosing things that people know to be a certain colour are the most effective, something that could be green or purple isn’t going to have the same impact as say seeing a pink line down the middle of a road or a sunflower that looks like a shade of alizarin crimson.
On one side is a digital image from the same scene as the Lomochrome Purple version opposite.
August 20th, 2015 at 5:42 am
Great pics. I have come to the conclusion that there are/have been at least two versions of LomoChrome Purple. The original film, which you seem to be using here, seems to be just like normal colour negative film except that the magenta and yellow dyes are swapped around. This can easily be verified by taking your digital photos, decomposing them into CYM layers, then composing again with yellow and magenta back to front. You end up with the LomoChrome Purple image. However, there are other images at Lomography’s site that show a totally different behaviour. If you were to take normal colour negative film but with the cyan and yellow dyes switched around, and then load it back-to-front like redscale, you would get a film that varies from black to dark blue to magenta to white. It would also be quite unpredictable like redscale, as the ISO setting would affect it and allow light greens, cyans and pinks to break through in the bright areas. This matches what I’m seeing in recent ‘Purple’ galleries – LomoChrome Purple V2? If true, I think the new version is closer to the ideal of Lomography as it’s far less predictable and repeatable than a simple colour switch that could just as easily be achieved in the scanning software or Photoshop.
August 21st, 2015 at 10:12 am
Interesting Paul, thanks for the well thought response. If I use the film again I will look to see if it responds differently.