Review on Lomography 603 Fine Color Negative by Marc Stewart

Background: I'm a hobby photographer (several paid jobs, but I don't make a living from it) and wanted to review this film in more detail. I shoot 35mm as a hobby and live in the bright Arizona sun, so I wanted to see how this film would fare primarily as an alternative to Kodak Gold 200, another budget film option. I don't actually shoot with Lomo cameras and wanted to see how it would work with traditional 35mm SLRs and rangefinders. For this review I am testing films with my Canon A1 and various lenses (20mm f2.8, 35mm f2 and 55mm f1.2) to see if they are suitable as general purpose film and will update this review with Minolta later . Maxxum 7000 and Contax G1. I personally don't care about a lot of graininess, light leakage or unpredictable results and will review the film against other general purpose negatives. Film review: Lomography itself does not actually produce films. Instead, they rebrand other film types and sell them under their own brand. I've heard it's usually expired film, which gives it a distinctive "look" (higher grain, discoloration, unpredictable exposure). The expiry date is stated on the packaging 1/2016. You can identify the original film manufacturer using the 6-digit serial number under the barcode. I was numbered 114034, which made it a reboot of Ferrania's Italian film Solaris. This makes this film very valuable as rolls of this type usually cost $7 each while with this package you get 3 rolls at $8 each. I'm going to compare this repackaged Lomo to the Ektar 100, Kodak Gold 200 and finally the Solaris 100 samples I found online. Print film quality: I use Costco for development and printing. Great prices and generally good results. The print quality of this film was surprisingly good. I didn't notice any light leaks (there was one at the beginning of the video but that's a problem with my camera) and the colors were pretty good. Reds, greens and blues are vibrant, yellow is subtly muted and orange seems optimized for skin tones. In general, the colors are not too saturated (although not as bright as the Ektar), the contrast is high, but with a good dynamic range. You get great skin tones even when shooting at golden hour, which is nice. Most of my shots had a skylight filter to tone down the orange, but they looked great without it too. The graininess of my shots is minimal, much less than other cheap film I've used. For more saturated prints I recommend a slight underexposure (1/3 to 1/2 stop) as overexposure makes the colors less saturated. This film is very well suited for realistic printouts. Very little grain is visible, no light leakage, excellent realistic colors (if not oversaturated), good contrast and predictable exposure. I am very impressed. Scanned film specifications: I used an Epson v500 with the default scanning program to scan the film. The settings I used were 3200 DPI, low grain reduction, low unsharp mask and high digital ICE. The rest of the settings were standard. The saved TIF files were then processed in Lightroom 5 with the prints as a reference for how the colors should look, albeit with some white balance and exposure adjustments. The scans came out fairly flat (low contrast and saturation), albeit with a very high exposure latitude. That's good because it means you can customize them to your liking. Colors may not appear immediately like Ektar does, but they're easier to fine-tune with contrast and saturation alone than with extensive white balance and hue adjustments. Even when scanned, there's very little graininess, and here I'd say it looks as sharp and detailed as Ektar's. I'm very impressed with it and I'm very happy with the way they scan. Film quality compared to other brands: I would say this film is a little better than the standard Kodak Gold or Fuji Superia 200 film. It's a little slower (advantageous in my case) but the prints look better and the scans are fantastic too . The colors are much more accurate here, especially the oranges look more realistic. I wouldn't say the colors are richer, but in my opinion they look a lot nicer. Contrast is similar, but there's more detail in the shadows and highlights overall (but still good contrast). The grit is very minimal compared to Gold and Superia. Lomo film scans much better, with less grain and easier to edit colors. The big competition here is Ektar, but I still prefer Ektar for prints because Ektar's colors are a bit more interesting. Think of this Lomo film as the Porta 160. Although they scan pretty close and if you're creative enough you can make them as good as Ektar. Samples online from Solaris look identical, meaning this film is just a rebrand and not an expired version of this film. Pros: Lowest film price I've found. Speed 100 is great for bright scenes and larger apertures. 35mm digital camera, adjust film sensitivity automatically. Very realistic colors, great base colors and skin tones. The prints look great, with very good contrast and exposure. Very good scan, almost the same as Ektar. For a more saturated look, manually set the film speed to 125 or 160. This makes colors more vibrant and gives you deeper blacks. Conclusion: Overall I can't fault this film for this price. It exceeded my expectations and I will definitely be ordering more in the future. This is the best consumer film I have ever used and also the cheapest. I prefer 100 film over 200 film due to the sunny conditions I typically shoot in and it certainly outperforms both Kodak Gold 200 and Fuji Superia 200. Overall I think Ektar film is still better and my personal favorite is, but at current prices ($10 each). reel), this Lomo film costs less than a third of the price. If you've ever hesitated to order this film because of the Lomo name, I would advise you to check it out and be pleasantly surprised. and will be using this film much more in the future.