Paint the Town Purple: Lomochrome Purple First Impressions

After many months of reading about the Lomochrome Purple XR 100-400 and looking at pictures on the website, I finally can say a word or two about my own experience with the latest Lomography film.

My first impressions of the *Lomochrome Purple* weren’t really that exciting. But that happens to me with every single film I shoot. It is only after some time, when I look back at the pictures, that I find the beauty in them. With my first roll of Lomochrome Purple, it was no different.

I took it on a trip to Sevilla and loaded it on my Horizon Kompakt to try it for the first time. The first piece of advice I can give to anyone trying this film is to use it with a camera which you can change the settings (aperture and shutter speed), or else all the pictures will have the same tone, unless you use it under very different lighting conditions. Probably this was why I didn’t get all excited with my results at first, as they all have more or less the same colors.

My second advice is to use it in a place you know well so you can notice the changes in colors. The way this film totally changes some colors is my favorite thing about it. I didn’t do this myself – it was my first trip to Sevilla and when I saw the pictures back at home, I couldn’t tell what the original colors of the subjects were.

Fortunately, as the avid lomographer they say I am, I took other films and cameras with me. When I finally finished shooting the Fuji Pro 160S color negative film with my Horizon and had it developed, I found out that many of the photos I shot were of the same place where I took most of my Lomochrome Purple shots: the beautiful Plaza de España

Now I realize that when you start to understand the changes in colors the Purple makes, you can start to have fun with it. I hope I’m able to show some of its capabilities with both my color negative and purple pictures.

In this first pair, you can see the color shift in the buildings. I think it is safe to say that orange bricks turns into salmon pink. One thing you can notice also, and it’s another feature I like about the Lomochrome Purple, is how the color of the water comes out.

Among the things that everybody tries to shoot with the Purple are trees and plants. Announced as a film inspired by infrared results, the color green is supposed to turn purple. It does, but sometimes it’s not as purple as I wish. Again, doesn’t the water look beautiful?

By comparing the color negative pictures with the purple ones, I noticed that the gray becomes more of a blue, as you can see on the ground of the square.

I saved my favorite Purple trick of all for last: yellow objects turn into a very strong pink color, sometimes almost red or magenta. Check out the carriage wheels!

I learned two things after carefully studying these pictures: I must photograph yellow objects and water with this film. The next logical place to shoot with this film is the beach. But that maybe is for a review for my first roll of Lomochrome Purple 120.

written by saidseni on 2014-09-07 #gear #review #panoramic #horizon-kompakt #requested-post #35mm-films #lomochrome-purple