My name is Andrew and I am a fine art destination wedding photographer in Italy (Lake Como, Amalfi). In the weddings I work mainly digital and medium format but in my spare time I like testing various films and share my results with other people. So here we go... the 35mm film review: Lomography Color 400
To be honest - I don't like all those LOMOs like lomo cameras or even strange colour lomo films. However a man from UK uploaded one images and I fell in love with its colours right away. When asked - he mentioned Lomography Color 400. I did some research and found this film to be quite interesting to review. It is cheap, it is colourful and very close to natural life... at least in the sample images. So I went ahead and planned some portrait photoshoot for the test. This time I found a professional scanner in our capital Vilnius - PhotoLab (you can find them at www.photolab.lt). They were very quick and I hardly had to wait anything longer than couple of days for them to develop and scan the film. So this is what we have got and if you are interested in more technical information - scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find my side by side comparison of these footage against digital shots in one of our vintage photoshoots. Enjoy!
Lomography Color 400
Lens: Olympus Zuiko 50mm F1.8
Location: Vilnius, Panevezys (LITHUANIA)
Dev + Scan: PhotoLAB(www.photolab.lt)
Challenges:
First, I was advised to overexpose this film by at least one stop. Two is also great. This is what I followed most of the time while using this film. Well, it became harder to take pictures in dimmer locations at ISO 200, but it was manageable. I also have troubles with manual focus and split screen. I missed the focus in around 8-9 shots :( Those were quite unique so no second chance is given. The photoshoot with the red haired girl was mostly done with overexposure by 2 stops. Just in case if you wondered.
Personal opinion:
I fell in love with this film. I love its colours, its contracts and lack of noise. First time I see such film that is so cheap and yet meets most of my checkpoints. I would definitely recommend it for portrait photography.
Since I was organising a very interesting photoshoot with the model and a vintage Russian car - I had a privilege to make some tests. I shot the same shots with both - digital and film.The only difference - the digital shots are taken with Canon 50mm F1.2 @ F1.8:
Lomography Color 400 v. Canon 6D raw edited in Lightroom
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