Ok, for starters, this isn’t my first go around with infrared film. I’ve had fairly disastrous results with black and white infrared before with few frames being usable. Well I saw the FPP had hand spooled cartridges of 35mm loaded up. It’s expensive but I bought a roll! I just had shoot a roll of color infrared while I had the chance. It’s not like they’re making more of this stuff! Later the FPP ran a sale and I bought another roll or two and after seeing these results I’m glad I did.

I followed the FPP’s guide and used a trusty “A” series canon and a yellow filter. I loaded and unloaded it in complete darkness and had The Darkroom process it for me. While I mostly kept the film in a cool place I should have kept it in the fridge or freezer and I should have processed it more quickly than I did. Still those issues aside I had some pretty awesome success with it.

A couple things I noticed with this film. For starters it’s iso 400 slide film. ISO 400 in slide film is grainier than color or b&w negative 400 speed film. It’s about as fast as slide film comes. While not necessarily as grainy as ISO 3200 black and white film, it’s at least as bad as ISO 800 color negative. Probably in between the two.

Another thing that really super matters is exposure. I had a roll of Velvia come back in the same order and the amount of latitude regular color slide film had compared to the Aerochrome was astounding. The Aerochrome’s shadows seemed to block up really quickly and slightly underexposed frames had a red cast to them. At the same time I had superb highlights. In the future I might rate this film at ISO 250. It might have been the temperature and delay in processing but some frames came out beautiful. I don’t know, your mileage may vary.

Finally this film is pretty much blue or red, there’s not a lot in between that I saw. Might have been my shooting conditions though. It almost seems duotone with the highlights leaning towards blue and the shadows leaning towards red.

Without further adieu here are some of my successes on my first roll of FPP Color Infared or Kodak Aerochrome 1443. (NB while Photoshop was used to dust spot, crop, and adjust levels, the striking effect is the false color infrared film itself)







