At last: fresh rolls of Lomography's stunning color shift film Turquoise are being shot all over the world right now.
Lomography announced the return of Turquoise in November 2021 and wasted no time opening up preorders in three formats: 35mm, 120, and 110. Supply chain issues delayed shipment of the film until October 2022, but better late than never. Having never tried Turquoise, I loaded up three rolls in cameras as soon as it arrived. So, was it worth the wait?
If you've never heard about this film, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. Lomography Turquoise is a popular color shift film that was first released in 2015. Lomography states that the film "transforms everyday colors into shades of deep emerald, cobalt, and cyan, while tints of blue fade into gorgeous golden gradients".
It's fun working out what the color shifts are, some of the ones I've noticed are: blue skies turning orange, green turning dark green, yellow turning turquoise, and red turning blue.
This time around, it’s a new formula for Turquoise, so it will be interesting to see if there are any major differences to the old version.
Have you tried the new or old Turquoise? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments.
This is making me want to pick up my OM-4 again! I was thinking, just the other day, how film is making a comeback, especially Polaroid film. With so much post-processing available in the digital realm, it's become impossible to tell what's real and what's not. While the end result may be the same - art is art, whatever the process used to get there - I wonder if there's a value on looking at images you know haven't been manipulated. Dodging and burning, sure, but nothing else. Then along comes this amazing film, where manipulation has obviously taken place, but not like a digital image (LomoChrome may change the color and tone of the sky but it isn't able to turn a cloudy sky into a clear sky, for example). Does anyone else remember when digital SLRs became affordable and Nikon continued to make high end film cameras, too? One of my favorites was a film-body SLR that had an LCD screen on the back, so you could still check the image and adjust settings, but shoot on film. Sure wish those were still around!
Yes, do it ha ha! OM-4 is a great camera. I love shooting film as I feel like 90% of the work is done when I press the shutter, which is quite different to digital. I outsource the develop and scanning to a very good lab here in Australia and love the files they send me. Turquoise is a fun film, I also recomend Purple for some colour shift fun!