Following on from the discovery in the previous post, I’ve decided to furnish my Lubitel 166B with some food. Fujichrome Provia 400x slide film to be precise. It’s been kind of weird shopping for film again for the first time in almost ten years – like I said – feels sort of liberating, and I’m not sure why! There’s been no real method behind my choice apart from a quick glace around Flickr to see how this stuff works when ‘Cross-Processed’.
Cross processing? Yes – I had much the same reaction you probably are when I first read that phrase. See… the normal chemical process for developing slide film is known as E6. This uses a specific set of chemicals to get the colours as accurate etc as possible. There is a separate set of chemicals for the processing of colour negative film, and the process is known as C41. So, what happens when you process a colour slide film using the C41 (negative film) process? What sort of crazyness is that!? I’ll tell you what happens… the whole world implodes in an annihilating explosion that takes all mankind with it. Or not.
Truth be told, it produces what can only be described as funky transparencies. It basically screws with the colours and contrast of an image, with very interesting effect. I’ve gone and ordered a multipack off Ebay for not much money, so it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with. I’m going to shoot off a roll or two first, and send it off for processing. I’ve found a place (Peak Imaging) in Sheffield, that does cross-processing of slide film for just under a fiver…
http://www.peak-imaging.com/htmls/film_processing.htm
Apparently, cross-processing Provia produces a yellowy hue, with greens and yellows emphasized. Kind of like the following shot (not mine by the way)…
Click here to check out a good photostream on Flickr for some more examples…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonbase/276389961/ in/photostream/
I’ll probably also get hold of some Black and White 120 too, along with a Developer tank and chemicals, and process some myself again (for the first time in 10 years! – oh how I miss the smell of developer in the morning!). Oh what a voyage of discovery this is!
Lastly – go here for a bit of a rundown of cross processing, and more examples…
http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/10/15/cross-processing-tips-and-suggestions/
Thing is, I’m going back to basics here. I’ve forgotten what the thrill of sending a film off to the lab and having to WAIT to get it back is like..! Digital is brilliant in so many ways, but this is the first time I’m going to really have to think about what I’m taking, from both an exposure and technical point of view. But Lomography is about not thinking isn’t it? Bah! I’ll figure it out somehow…
Hello – I saw this post through Google. I just wanted to say that I have started down the ‘memory lane’ that is film and only recently fully acknowledged the concept of Lomography.
I often cross-processed when shooting film, but this all got forgotten in the switch from analogue to digital, and I still do not know why. That bothers me a bit.
I am still experimenting, and have adapted things at the moment to suit my needs. However, a ‘proper’ Lomo camera is definitely in the pipeline. Thank you for enthusing me further!
Glad my post has helped get someone’s juices flowing, so to speak. My Lomo-based experiments have kind of stalled recently, just due to a lack of time. I’ve still got plenty of film to shoot, so it WILL get going again! Let me know how it goes for you!