Redscale film

At the risk of upsetting those film manufacturers who sell RedScale film, Redscale film is really not a mystery.  Redscale film is created by shooting a colour film the wrong way. Normally when you load a film into a camera,  the correct procedure is to load the film so that the emulsion faces the lens and is exposed to light directly.  With Redscale the film is orientated so the the emulsion is facing away from the lens and the exposure is made by allowing the light to pass through the orange plastic film before hitting the emulsion. It should be noted that the colour layers of a film are arranged blue, green and red. Normal exposure  will allow the light to start with the blue working its way back to the red layer. With Redscale its the red layer that gets exposed first.

The orange plastic film carrier acts as a colour filter and causes the film to record shades of red or orange or yellow, depending on whether the film is overexposed,  correctly exposed or underexposed.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, you can choose to buy Redscale film, but making your own is much more fun. 

Place a roll of 35mm colour film into a dark bag, along with a roll of sellotape and a pair of scissors.  Once the dark bag is sealed , pull the film out of the canister.  About an inch from the canister cut the film. Then turn the canister through 180° and sellotape the two back together.  Wind the film back into the film canister , leaving the tongue out. Then pull a short length of film from the canister and cut off the tongue.  Reshape the film tongue and voila! You have your own Redscale film.

Ive just made a couple of rolls. Watch this space for the results. 

Exposure of your homemade Redscale film is achieved by rating the film 2 stops slower than box speed. Normally I use an ISO 400 speed film for Redscale and rate it at ISO 100. If you consider how to use an orange filter with black and white film it is the same principle. 

The photos in the blog were taken using homemade Redscale film from Fujifilm Superia 400. The shots were made in Tunisia in 2005.