“Bluescaling” Lomochrome Turquoise

Lomochrome Turquoise is a false-colour negative film designed by Lomography to render freaky orange, cobalt, and marine palettes. Out of the box, this emulsion is already incredibly unique, but it can be pushed even further for a rare and wild look.

Below, I’ll share the two colour palettes you can get by redscaling Lomochrome Turquise and the scanning/editing techniques to get the colours you see in this article. In this article: Why “bluescaling”? Redscaling, greenscaling, and bluescaling colour films. Exposure settings. Scanning & colour correction. Is this worth doing again? Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Why “bluescaling”?

Redscaling is a term in film photography that describes shooting film with the emulsion side facing away from the camera. This makes most colour films produce deep red colours with diminished greens and almost non-existent blues. You can learn more about redscaling here.

But Lomography’s Lomochrome Turquoise isn’t a typical colour-negative film. Out of the box, it creates wild orange and blue-dominant colours as its inner layers don’t have a conventional order or sensitivity. Because of that, when shot backwards (i.e., redscaled), Lomochrome Turquoise becomes a blue-dominant film. Reds and bright greens turn green, whereas blues can remain or turn orange, depending on their brightness.

Since the Turquoise turns blue and not red, I think it’s a little more fun and descriptive to call this process bluescaling. Turquoise is an exception to the rule, where most colour films will turn red when loaded inside-out — but it’s not the only one: there’s a film you can greenscale (but that can get quite expensive).

Redscaling, greenscaling, and bluescaling colour films.

In principle, most colour films work the same way: there are three colour-sensitive layers, which, after development and scanning, render complementary colours on screen.

The blue-sensitive layer is on the outside, facing the lens. The green-sensitive layer is right behind, but it receives less light as it filters through the blue-sensitive layer. To balance those colours, manufacturers make the green-sensitive layer more sensitive to light than the blue. The red-sensitive layer is behind the blue and the green layers, receiving the least amount of light and thus needing to be the most sensitive of the three to balance the colours. Redscaling flips this order upside-down; the careful balance of colour sensitivity between the layers is upset, now with the red layer in front of the lens receiving the most light, which it also boosts due to its relatively high sensitivity. This is what produces red-dominant images on most redscaled colour films. (Learn more.)

Lomochrome Turquoise’s colour layers are different. They may be in a different order, and they may produce non-complementary colours (for example, blue is rendered as orange). This is why loading this film inside-out shifts the colours to blue instead of red. As far as I know, Lomochrome Turquoise is the only film that bluescales.

Another false-colour film (an emulsion that renders non-complementary colours) is Lomochrome Purple, made by the same company. When loaded and shot normally, it creates a purple and blue-dominant palette. Unfortunately, loading this film inside-out does not make a significant change to the colours rendered — it simply becomes more pink.

The only film that greenscales when loaded inside-out is Aerochrome. This film is extremely expensive and somewhat rare, but it can create some of the wildest and unique colours when loaded inside-out.

✪ Note: Shooting black-and-white films inside-out will not change their colour (obviously), using a lens filter will not achieve the same look as loading film inside-out, and using digital filters may also not replicate the effects sufficiently.

Exposure settings.

Lomochrome Turquoise is marketed by Lomography as an “extended range” emulsion, which means it will produce images at a wide range of exposure settings. Out of the box, you can shoot it as an ISO 100, 200, or 400 film. The colours will shift depending on how you expose your film, but that does not degrade the quality of a film with unusual colours in the first place.

Bluescaled Lomochrome Turquoise’s colours change dramatically depending on how it’s exposed.

All redscaled colour films lose sensitivity compared to their “normal” selves. Lomochrome Turquoise is not an exception; instead of the original 100-400 ISO range, it will now be more sensitive around ISO 25-100.