I've been lucky enough to get my grubby little hands on a couple of packs of text emulsions for PX70 - the amazing new colour film from the introverted geniuses (genii?) over at the Impossible Project. I've already started posting a few shots over at my Flickr and Polanoid, but I thought I'd give you a flavour of what to expect when you crack open the first shot.
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I thought this shot would be fucking great - as it turned out I was wrong, but hey ho.
So for anyone who gets off on technical nonsense this was a bright sunlit room in the late afternoon. Just as I felt it was compulsory to take a flower and horse shot with this stuff, so I thought I should aim the camera at myself, and apart from the obvious deficiencies with the photo itself - subject matter mainly - I was really concerned when I saw this massive marbling effect. So I scanned it after a few minutes, and thought i'd keep an eye on it - if it's any explanation it was late, i was bored... It soon became clear that the marble (or octopus skin as Jess Hibbard called it) fades and changes over time, which is all rather interesting.ps// I was using an SX70 Sonar (with the Sonar turned off) if any of you are interested... No? Heathen.
I got quite excited by this point ^ because it looked like real colours were infecting the image. Previous to this i'd only found murky, but interesting, monochrome blues, which weren't really the best advert for a colour film... As we'll see in a later blog post it is possible to extract true colours from the PX70, it just seems a lot harder to do indoors and you're much more reliant on good natural light, which ironically was one of the main enemies of the early Silvershade PX100. The marble is blending in to the image by this point too you'll notice - probably 2 hours after taking the photo.
And fuck it. After about 6 hours the colours are gone again ^. I suppose the blues look like the classic SX70 Time Zero blues superficially.
And they are.
And this is very very hopeful.
But there's also a big difference at the moment.
Where TZ seems to give light to a picture, PX seems to take it away. But, comparing a brand new film to the greatest film ever made is a hideously unfair game even by my own high standards of unreasonableness.
And this is what it look like at 0925 on the 31st July 2010 ^ roughly 36 hours after taking it. You'll notice it's darker than it ever has been, with more interesting contrast too. Pale creams have replaced the colours that began to show. You'll also notice, strangeley, the marbling has stayed (to some extent). Strange because this is the only shot that shows marble artefacts long after being taken and if you go to my Flickr again you can see this in reality. There's also a smoothness to the shots I've put on Flickr so far that this photo doesn't have - but we should embrace these early variabilities.
What I particularly love about these prints is their glossiness. That might sound vulgar, but they're truly beautiful and for a bargain introductory price of ..... whatever it is for 3 packs you'd be mad not to snaffle some up and have a go.
There's also a chance to get a bulk load of PX70 to test by submitting your best shot. So get involved.
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