35mm Lucky Dip – Kodak ProImage 100

The only colour roll in the original 35mm Lucky Dip has finally made its way back home to Elland. I keep notes on each roll of film I expose and this one is 2023/107, the one hundred and seventh roll of 2023. It’s also been given a title in my notebook – the strolling with Saul roll.

All images: Leica IIIf, Elmar 50mm lens and Kodak ProImage 100

Whilst early work from Saul Leiter is in black and white he is most famous for colour work, made at a time when colour photography was looked down upon in some quarters as inferior to black and white. Indeed, Leiter is often cited as a pioneer of colour photography although he himself simply shrugged and said that he just liked colour.

Much of his colour work was created on transparency, otherwise known as slide, film. I rarely use colour these days and cannot remember the last time I used a roll of colour transparency film. However, if I was to truly embrace the aesthetic I felt I needed to also embrace colour film and as this roll came up in my lucky dip at the same time as I was reading a book on Leiter’s work it seemed serendipitous at the very least.

Once seen you won’t un-see the typo!

Lovely saturated reds from the film

I like the neutral colour tones … this was with the sun in front of the camera albeit not in the frame

Now, I was using a fresh roll of film but Leiter regularly used expired film and seemed to relish the colour casts and imperfections, or at least the unpredictable nature, of the film. I have taken the liberty therefore of tweaking a few of the images here to shift colours as an homage to his style. Not all though, I will need to seek out some expired colour film for that purpose.

Colours tweaked to add a colour shift and desaturate things slightly

Incidentally, the film was developed and scanned for me by the team at Analogue Wonderland. I have tweaked them slightly to my taste, or to shift colours as mentioned above, but in reality the scans were just fine exactly as they arrived in my electronic mailbox.

The film scanned very nicely

Would I use this film again? Well the reality is that I have two rolls left so I will be using it. However, I’m very happy to do so though as I was well pleased with what I got from this roll. Who knows, I might manage a couple more rolls before the month is out!