Redscaling Lomochrome Purple

What Happens if You Shoot False-Colour Film “The Wrong Way?”

4 min read by Dmitri.
Published on April 17, 2025. Updated on April 18, 2025.

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Redscaling means exposing the backside of colour film, which usually makes moody, red-dominant photos. But that’s on regular film. Lomochrome Purple isn’t regular — it’s a false-colour film, which means it behaves differently when redscaled.

The three best-known false-colour films on the market are Turquoise, Aerochrome, and Purple. Aerochrome is insanely expensive; besides, I’ve already redscaled it last week (it looks wild). Turquoise is loaded into my camera — backwards — for the next article. Redscaled Lomochrome Purple is today’s treat.

In this article, I’ll share some thoughts and samples from my week-long experiment shooting Lomochrome Purle loaded “the wrong way.”

In this article: Filter. Exposure. Scanning & colour correction. Is this worth doing again? Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

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Redscaled Lomochrome Purple with green filter.

Filter.

Last week’s redscaled or, as I called it, greenscaled Aerochrome was the world’s first attempt to do so. I had no idea what it would look like ahead of time. But Lomochrome Purple had already been redscaled by others.

All samples of redscaled Lomochrome Purple I found online looked pink with very little colour variation. So I decided to use a fairly dense green filter to balance the colours.

I used Gr 1, a vintage bayonet glass attachment for my foldable Vitessa A rangefinder. This filter cuts about two stops of light to the lens.

In retrospect, it’s hard to tell how much of an effect the filter delivered without a one-to-one comparison. Many of my results still looked quite pink, though not all:

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Redscaled Lomochrome Purple with green filter.

Exposure.

Photographers who have already tried shooting Lomochrome Purple as a redscaled film usually suggest exposing it as if it’s an ISO 25 film. Even though Lomography rates it at ISO 100-400, redscaling usually cuts the sensitivity of film significantly, so the lower ISO estimate checks out. Based on the samples I’ve seen, I figured that redscaled Lomochrome Purple could take a little less light, say, if I rated EI 50 — but I still had to consider the filter, which effectively lowered my estimate to ISO 12.

I used my Sunny 16 method to meter all my exposures.

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Redscaled Lomochrome Purple with green filter.

Scanning & colour correction.

The roll I got out of my camera was a mixed bag, where most frames looked very pink, but others not so much. I’m not sure what may be causing this; it could be a number of things, from the light colour temperature (it was a mix of sunny and cloudy days) to minute exposure differences. In any case, I was able to edit most of my shots to show a bit more colour separation and make realistic blacks and white points.

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Redscaled Lomochrome Purple with green filter.

Is this worth doing again?

I love trying new things. Shooting redscaled Lomochrome Purple with a green filter is certainly that. Pulling the film out of the development tank felt magical, as I had absolutely no clue what would come out until I made my first scans.

Yet, I don’t think there’s sense in doing this again. While some results look interesting, they are not significantly different from the vanilla Lomochrome Purple. Except that the exposures and colour corrections are now more difficult, and the grain looks coarser.

But at least we now know what it looks like.

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About this article:

Dmitri