LomoChrome Purple FIlm – My journey through film photography

Lomography Fisheye No. 2 35mm Camera and LomoChrome Purple XR 100-400 Film

I’ve owned a Lomography Fisheye No. 2 camera for several months but hadn’t felt the need to blog about it until now.

The main reason was because I also have a circular lens for my Pentax K1000 which I always thought would give me better control of my shots due to it being an SLR.

Also, when I first tried out the Fisheye No. 2 camera I wasn’t overly happy with the results. I now realise it was probably due to me trying to be too sensible with the camera. I had taken some shots locally around where I live to test it out and I had used a normal colour film. Both of which I felt did not do the circular style photos any justice and they ended up looking really boring and dull.

What also hadn’t helped was that I had let the handy plastic lens cap with a strap which was attached to the camera just merrily dangle at the bottom of the camera when taking my shots and I didn’t realise whilst shooting that it would end up in a majority of my photographs like the one below:

Can you see it? The white circular thing that my dog and cat are looking at. I was most annoyed at myself for not realising this at the time of shooting but I guess I just didn’t see it in the viewfinder when I was taking the photos.

After being somewhat underwhelmed with the photos and knowing I had a circular lens for my Pentax K1000 I considered giving this camera away. Thankfully my husband intervened and talked me into keeping the camera (I think partly because he thought the actual camera looked really cool with the black and silver chrome design).

The camera remained on my shelf back in it’s original packaging for a few months, then one morning after feeling guilty about having a camera just sitting there not being used, I thought to myself, why don’t I load it with some LomoChrome Purple 35mm film and try again?

I promptly removed the lens cap and strap from the camera and popped to the local cemetery as I knew the purple film would work well there.

This time when I got my roll of film developed, I wasn’t disappointed. I was extremely impressed with the results! Here are a couple of shots I took:

What I really love about this camera is how easy it is to take multiple exposures! If I was to attempt that on my Pentax K1000 it really isn’t as simple as a push of a button like it is on this camera.

I had great fun experimenting with the multiple exposure option and here are some of the results:

I now finally understand this camera and it was really fun to use especially when using a fun film such as the LomoChrome Purple. I was also really impressed with the multiple exposure shots and will definitely be experimenting more with these.

The other great thing is that it’s fairly light so I can carry it around easily in my bag when out and about taking photos.

I’m going to try using the camera at night time next since it has a built in flash so I’ll be interested to see the results.

On a final note, I’d also like to mention that the ‘Fisheye Rumble in the Pond’ book by Lomography is a fun read. I had bought this book around the same time I purchased the camera as it gives some tips on how to shoot with the camera.

Double Exposures with my Lomography Sprocket Rocket Camera in Kuala Lumpur

Back in September I visited Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the day along with my husband and a couple of friends.

I knew my husband would be taking lots of bulk standard photos during our visit there with a digital camera so I decided to mix it up a bit and load up my Sprocket Rocket Camera with some LomoChrome Purple 400 35mm film.

I’d figured that whilst visiting I would be taking a lot of landscape shots, which the Sprocket Rocket Camera is great for since it’s panoramic and as mentioned in previous blog posts, I love the sprocket hole effect.

Unfortunately on the day I visited, the weather was really bad and constantly rained. This meant I didn’t manage to take as many photos as I had originally planned.

Also the frame counter on my camera didn’t seem to be working properly and I’m still not sure whether this was me not loading the film correctly or if the film had got slightly jammed or due to the torrential rain, in my haste to try and take photos quickly, I just wasn’t using it correctly.

Either way, since the frame seemed to remain constantly around the 3 mark and didn’t seem to count upwards beyond that number, I knew that I would most likely end up with multiple exposures which is exactly what happened.

It transpired after developing the film that several of the photos I’d taken ended up being multiple exposures and here they are:

Here are a couple of shots that I must have managed to move the film on correctly so they didn’t end up as a multiple exposure:

Trying to take photos or do some sightseeing in bad rain was certainly not a pleasant experience and although I didn’t manage to take as many photos as I had hoped, I’m pleased I at least managed to take a couple.

My Olympus Pen FT Camera and Lomochrome Purple 35mm film

I’m a big lover of the Lomography Lomochrome Purple film (since purple is my favourite colour!) and have really liked the results in other cameras I’ve used it in.

I therefore wanted to try it out in my Olympus Pen FT camera. I already knew from trying out the film previously that it worked well with landscapes.

I therefore visited Seven Sisters Country Park in Eastbourne to take some landscape photos and here are some of the results:

I was really happy with the results of the film with the landscape and I managed to achieve the cool purple effect I was after. I wasn’t sure how the pictures of the sheep would turn out but I was pleased with those photos too.

Since the half frame camera has twice as many photos to shoot, I didn’t manage to use up the film whilst at Seven Sisters.

I therefore headed to Brighton Marina and took some more pictures using my 25mm Zuiko lens and also my 150mm Zuiko telephoto lens and here are some of the results:

You’ll see that the film wasn’t nearly as effective as it had been on the landscape shots. I did feel the photos taken at the marina had a vintage feel to them and there is clearly a hint of purple and a lot of the blues on the boats have turned into a green colour.

I also took a couple of photos of the cliffs nearby:

Again, the purple was only really effective on the green parts of the landscape but I did like the effect the film had on the blues of the sky and sea.

I still had a couple more shots of film left to use up (72 exposures goes a long way!), so I decided to head to my local cemetery in Hove and here are some of the results:

I was really pleased with the results of these photos too. I got the purple effect I was after along with a nice contrast of turquoise sky in some of them.

I know I’ll definitely be using this film again when taking landscape shots as I absolutely love the colours it produces.

The Sprocket Rocket Camera and LomoChrome Purple XR 100-400 35mm Film

My favourite colour is Purple and I have a real love of psychedelic style photography with weird and wacky colours instead of the normal colour photos.

It was pretty obvious to me in view of this that I was going to end up having a real love of the LomoChrome Purple film available at Lomography.

Since the ISO range is between 100-400, it gives more experimentation options of the colour results. Basically, if you have an ISO of 100, the purple will be brighter and lighter on greens and if the ISO is 400, the greens in a photo will be more of an indigo colour.

This is a 35mm film which is developed under the standard C-41 process.

Lomography also do a 120mm film version which I’m keen to try out in my Diana F+ camera but as is often common with Lomography films, this is currently out of stock.

I’ve tried this film a couple of times now (in my Sprocket Rocket camera which recommends an ISO film of 400) and I’ve been extremely impressed with the results.

Here are some photos I recently took on my second roll of the LomoChrome film I put in this camera:

fullsizeoutput_1401 fullsizeoutput_13fd fullsizeoutput_13fe fullsizeoutput_13ff

The above images were taken during a trip on the River Thames in London. The pictures below were taken whilst out and about in Brighton:

fullsizeoutput_1403 fullsizeoutput_140c fullsizeoutput_1414 fullsizeoutput_1412 fullsizeoutput_140d fullsizeoutput_1415 fullsizeoutput_140e fullsizeoutput_1411 fullsizeoutput_140f

I really love the pictures taken on this style film. I’ve now put a roll of the LomoChrome Purple film in my Olympus Pen FT camera as I will have more control of the image quality compared to what I have on the Sprocket Rocket camera so I’m looking forward to seeing the results (which I will upload in my blog once the film is developed).