Frugal Film Project March 2025 - Red State
In my quest to do something different every month for my 2025 Frugal Film Project, I decided that for my March roll I would shoot it as Red Scale.
What is “Red Scale” you may ask?
How light normally passes through the several layers found in color film. Image courtesy of Wikipedia author Voytek S.
Normally, when you shoot color film, light passes through the color layers (blue, green, red) in order, with the blue layer on top. In Red Scale, the film is loaded "backwards," so light passes through the base first, hitting the red-sensitive layer before the others. Because the red-sensitive layer is exposed first, the images exhibit a strong red/orange/yellow color cast, hence the name "Red Scale". Because light travels through the film base, the ISO of the film is effectively lowered, which means the film must be over-exposed to compensate.
I used a spent 35mm film cartridge with a little film leader left to roll the Fuji 400 film backwards for the Red Scale effect. This was done in my darkroom (aka my bathroom) to prevent any light leaks. Once done, I loaded it in my Canonet QL19 and took it with me on a trip to Grand Lake St. Mary’s. I set the ISO to 80 on the camera to give it just over 2 stops of extra light to compensate for the light passing through the film base.
Unfortunately, the QL19’s autoload feature did not like the reversed film’s opposite curl, and the first 10 images or so overlapped and skipped. I could tell this was happening so I stopped and rewound the roll when I got home. I reloaded it again, this time cutting off the leader and then gently advancing through the first 10 frames with the cap on the lens. Of course this effort was a little bit futile as all of those first images were rubbish due to the overlap issues. But now it seemed to be good to go with the reload.
Over the course of the next week I carried the QL19 with me and shot in both daylight and night conditions. Depending on the type of light and the duration of the exposure, the results were slightly different for the day exposures compared to the night exposures.
Some of my favorites from the roll are below. Click on the first image to expand and scroll through to view.
What do you think?
I really like the night shots. There’s a certain moodiness there that the Red Scale effect really enhances. I’m not much one for “gimmicky” film but I can see why so many people shoot Red Scale and why there are several film companies that offer reversed rolled film as Red Scale available to purchase ready to go.
OK, well that’s all for this month!
As always, thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or want to know more about the process.
Jeremy