Saturday, October 5, 2013

Rolling My Own

No, it's not what you think.
Though I did, back in another life.
Roll my own I mean.
I'm all excited about this red scale film and the effects it produces.
Only the stuff costs like $4 plus a roll.
It turns out that you can make your own with what ever color film you choose since red scale is all about exposing the back side of the emulsion.
Tutorials are all over utube and after watching a couple of them I decided to go ahead and try it.
First I had to create a dark room.
Not a darkroom, but a dark room which happened to be the bathroom since it only has one window.
I ordered me a changing bag thingy, but it hasn't come in yet.
So anyways, I taped up said window and waited for darkness to fall:

















You know, just in case.
Light is the killer here and luckily the bathroom door is pretty tight.
Getting the tools ready:

















One must work in total darkness so putting things where you can find them is a good idea.
Basically you pull out all the film outta one roll, tape to another roll and wind the film back on backwards:

















Okay, here we go!
Watch closely or you, the reader, will miss it!

















If you squint yer eyeballs you can see that I had a bit o'trouble getting the two pieces on straight.
I had to attach and reattach a couple of times to get it right.
Voila!

















Two rolls of roll your own red scale!
Perfecto mundo!
Okay, not really.
There was a glitch.
Light!
Believe it or not, peeling the tape off the dispenser creates a sort of spark.
At first I thought I was seeing things, but no, it definitely makes some kind of iridescence.
Not sure if it's enough to do any damage, but I'm assuming any kind of light is bad so those four rolls I did I'll use mostly as tests.
For now they get stored in the Flat Tire Film Vault (FTFV):

















I don't have any butter anyways.
So there you go!
Home made red scale!
Not as difficult as I thought except for the glow in the dark tape thing.
I'll shoot a couple of rolls tomorrow and see how it is.
I hope the one hour place takes it, if not I'll have to wait until Monday to see the results.
Stay tuned.

2 comments:

John Romeo Alpha said...

Triboluminescence!

limomaroni said...

Great.
Scotch tape produces Xrays.
That's all I needed to hear.
My four rolls of film are toast.
Of course now I'm going to have to go into the dark room and rub stuff together and pull sticky things apart.
You know, to test.