Redscale Reviews: First Impressions - Redscaled Kodak Gold 100 and the Olympus XA

I usually don’t redscale a roll of ISO100 speed film, as I like to shoot at low ISOs, but this is an exception. I redscaled this film just for fun and found the results to be quite interesting.

According to Kodak Gold 100’s data sheet, this is a low-speed colour negative film that offers an outstanding combination of colour saturation, fine grain, and high sharpness. It is designed for general picture-taking situations in daylight or with electronic flash. What’s more they are forgiving — from two stops underexposure to three stops overexposure. As a regular user of this product 10 years ago, I believe it.

Recently, I got my hands on a huge stash of this film online. A bonus was that the films expired in 2006, which was great news as a Lomographer. Yet, I didn’t want to just use them as they were intended, though I ran a roll through my Yashica GSN rangefinder just to check the condition of the film, which I found it to be still good. So I decided to redscale a roll just for fun.

For the purpose of this test, I decided to use the Olympus XA as it is one of my favourite cameras to bring on a holiday. The film was overexposed by 2 stops at ISO25. And for this test, I ran the film at different aperture settings, photographing a variety of subjects in the mid morning and afternoon. The negatives were scanned with an Epson V330 photo scanner. And here’s what I found.

At f11, photos produced would be those you expect – dark reds.

At f8, the colours become orangey.

At f5.6, the colours are still orangey but a tad lighter.

It is only at f2.8 when you will start to get the yellow-green hues.

I am a fan of the washed out tones, who is in pursuit of the fabled blue-green tones that is virtually impossible to get. Even so, I think I will continue to redscale this film. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it may good for dramatic landscapes or streetscapes.

written by uncle_jay on 2013-06-28 #gear #test #diy #expired #review #redscale #singapore #olympus-xa #reviews #kodak-gold-100 #iso-25 #redscaled-films-requested-posts-for-june-2013