Photo Gallery: Kanchanaburi Purple (Lomochrome)

Original Post: Kanchanaburi Revisited

I picked up a really odd roll of film a while back.

Lomochrome Purple is a C-41 film with a green color emulsion which gives the prints weird vibrant red, blue, and purple tones. It's meant to be the spiritual successor to the legendary (and legendarily tricky) Kodak Aerochrome infrared aerial surveillance film, which ceased production a few years back.

Lomography produced only 10,000 rolls of this film, and I got my hands on one. I would, however, like to try another roll sometime, now that I'm more familiar with how it works, and I now have a better camera to try it with!

These photos were shot on a roll of Lomochrome Purple XR 100-400 on my Diana Mini camera.

I took my trusty toy camera with me on my New Year's trip to Kanchanaburi. I got some awesome new cameras for Christmas (photo gallery posts coming soon!) but I had already loaded the purple film into my Diana Mini, so I brought that one along as well.

near the river

I took my camera to a Chinese temple in the town. I wanted to try to shoot somewhere with a lot of red, since the emulsion affects greens, turning them purple, but leaves reds. I wanted to try to find a lot of good contrast, and a Chinese temple, of course, has a lot of red! I like how the grass really turned purple here!

Buddha

This is the big temple building. The trees are kind of dark, but they actually turned purple like I was hoping for!

Chinese Temple

I like what this film does to a blue sky as well! it makes it look bright turquoise.

temple building

This dragon had a lot of red, which really looks great on this film. Shooting at a Chinese temple was a great idea.

Dragon 1

The red colors in this dragon didn't show up quite as much as in the last one. Sometimes Diana Mini doesn't do as well with closeup shots, but this one worked. I guess I was shooting in the shadows, and the colors turned more of a muddy blue. This is still one of my favorite shots from this roll of film.

Dragon 2

This image gave me a lot of good purple. It makes up for the kind of unexciting subject... a pond. Lomochrome certainly isn't an everyday sort of film, but it's fun to play with for sure.

near a pond

 This image almost gave more "true" color, with the blue sky and red temple roofs. It almost has a retro feel, like an old photo from the 70's. I think this is more how this film is supposed to feel. I love the purple tree especially. The composition here isn't great, but I think it better captures more of the range of this film.

temple buildings

I tried to take some photos at Erawan National Park, in fact, that was really my plan with this purple film, but it turns out the film is not so sensitive. You have to find a good balance. Too much light, and the rich purple doesn't really show up, but not enough and your image will be too dark to see anything. At Erawan, we were so deep in the jungle, that none of those pictures really turned out.

This was the only low-light image that developed decently. You can see that things look misty and blue, which is cool, but none of the purple tones developed. This picture was taken early on New Year's morning on the River Kwai.

River Kwai Sunrise

It's an experimental film for sure. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, and I can't say I'm disappointed. It's a weird emulsion, but super fun to shoot, and I was very excited to get my prints back from Asia Slide, my neighborhood photo stop.

I might try to shoot another roll sometime in the future, using a different camera with more settings. Diana Mini is fun, but it is a simple toy camera. I would like to experiment more with the range of this weird, weird film.

They also make a Lomochrome Turquoise. I've looked at some samples online, and I don't love all of what I've seen. It looks too alien, but as an experiment it might be fun to pick up a roll  before it's gone.