 Yo, what up welcome back to another episode that will probably be more enjoyable if you're on drugs Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace Well, I recorded a totally sick intro, but the mic wasn't working So I guess I should just go fuck myself basically in it. I was saying today We're gonna be shooting some Kodak air chrome, which is a color infrared film that was discontinued in 2009 Yep, Kodak was discontinuing film stocks long before Fuji I will be shooting with the Canon AE1 and the film has been preloaded because it's strongly recommended you load it in a pitch black Room due to the sensitive nature of it. Here's a quick visualization of what the loading process looked like So what the hell how did I acquire some of this mythical film since it was discontinued air chrome has become very very hard to Come by often going for absurd prices over on the dark web. However back in 2015 I somehow had the foresight to buy four rolls of air chrome from the film photography project Which is probably the only smart investment. I made that entire year. No my entire life at this point in time I've shot three of those four rolls the third roll being for this video here are some of my shots from the first two Times I tripped on air chrome As some of you know air chrome doesn't quite look like this right out of the box So how exactly did I get that red pink shit everywhere that makes it look like you're on an ungodly amount of LSD? Basically, it's strongly recommended that you shoot air chrome with a very deep orange filter to bring out the effect of red plant Life and blue skies or basically the Star Trek into darkness look a Lot of people hate on this movie. You know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and say it They're right for these shots I use the B&W 49 040 4x e orange filter in case that helps anyone be forewarned if you don't use an orange filter red filter yellow filter Whatever your shot will turn out blue very blue Bluer than a blue man from the blue man groups ass for future reference because I can't find it online anymore Here's the full list of guidelines for shooting air chrome that I was given when I bought it anyway Caleb and I were up in northern, California, and I figured it was time to shit or get off the pod This shot is air chrome perfection in my opinion It looks like some sort of abstract painting the vibrant hits of herpes red are complemented naturally by the Jolly Rancher turquoise So I have no idea what happened here I took a picture of this red barrier and somehow the air chrome turned it yellow My best guess is that the barriers made of some sort of recycled plant-based material either way it made the photo Look pretty damn cool. I really like this shot as well because it kind of just looks like a photo of a beach But if you look closely you can see some vibrant red seaweed washed up on the shore It's almost like the shot is hiding this wonderful little secret actually I take that back It kind of looks like a whale washed ashore and to get rid of it someone blew it up with dynamite Now you might be like why in the good golly would Kodak make a film like this Was it because all Kodak employees were secretly getting high on E6 chemicals back in the day? Possibly Kodak actually originally made this film to be used in war Kodak got in touch with the US government Was like hey, there's a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is invisible to the naked eye The cool thing about infrared light is that it reflects magnificently off of the chloroplast in trees grass Chronic bushes and the rest of your favorite botanical species, but other natural or man-made objects not so much So Kodak was like maybe that'd be helpful uncovering enemies draped in camouflage I don't know and the US government responded by funding their Kickstarter campaign completely after the war air chrome continued to Be produced though mostly for forest surveying applications, which frankly doesn't sound as badass as its original use eventually in 2009 Kodak was like fuck no one gives a shit about film anymore, so they discontinued air chrome completely, which means that now in 2021 it's extremely rare You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words Well, this one is not some of these shots were a little underexposed that happens sometimes with expired film I shot most of these at 320 ISO where air chrome is actually rated at 400 But I guess it wasn't enough air chrome definitely craves light as much as I crave donuts God I hate being on a diet the tricky thing with expired color positive film is that as far as I know There really isn't too much you can do to counter the effects of expiration For example with expired milk, you can pinch your nose start chugging and hope you don't your pants for expired color negative film You can overexpose a little bit to remedy any loss of sensitivity Unfortunately for expired color positive film, it's either good or it's not and generally that has everything to do with how it was stored Speaking of which these shots came in very purple, so I had to white balance them in light room to get them looking a bit more final In case it's not already obvious do not underexpose this film because it'll look like Brona sore Give me a little bit of leeway though because we're dealing with high contrast scenes and expired color positive film You may have heard of air chrome from several different places But I think probably the most popular instance of its use is when Richard Moss shot with it to document a civil war That was raging in the Congo the project was called infra and you can buy a copy of the book for the small price of 800 things off the dollar menu Later on Moss actually returned to shoot some 16 millimeter air chrome in a project called Enclave But we don't really hear anything about this ongoing humanitarian disaster And so I was I was fascinated then to bring this film which which registers the invisible makes visible the unseeable to bring that to a place which also It was a metaphorically of course, but it was in my mind It was a way of sort of trying to bring these two things together and just see see what would happen If you've ever seen the movie beasts of no nation you may recognize that there's a scene that was heavily inspired by Moss's work Real quick while I'm editing I'd also like to highlight the work of Karim Sahai who shot a set of air chrome while he was in North Korea of all places So I thought that was pretty interesting Before this video is wrapped up and never spoken of again I'd like to thank today's sponsor Squarespace if you're a photographer or artist of any kind looking to get your workout into The world through a professionally designed template then look no further It's no secret the best way to impress a potential client is by dunking in front of them But if you can't dunk it's always a good idea to have a well-rounded and organized space to display your work Luckily for you or anyone like me who has no website building experience Squarespace is an all-in-one website hosting platform I've been using Squarespace for a couple years now and I can honestly say it's been the easiest experience to host my Photography portfolio as well as provide analytics for my site and links to everything I do online So what are you waiting for if you're ready to build a website? You can start a free trial today at Squarespace comm slash Grainy days and if you use the code grainy days at checkout you can get 10% off your first purchase So is air chrome dank as or not dank as you bet your sweet ass. It's dank as fuck It's just one of those legendary stocks that immediately grabs your attention and makes you do a double-take when you see images shot on it It's just otherworldly as I mentioned before Kodak doesn't make this stock anymore But there's hope you can join me by emailing tagging and petitioning Kodak to bring it back But chances are they'll ignore your pleas like they keep ignoring the 600 pages of erotic Kodak fan fiction that I wrote for them On the other hand a representative for Kodak Alaris did briefly mention that they are working on reviving an old film We did see them bring back ectochrome in 2019 So who knows maybe they're working on a formula for ectochrome infrared otherwise known as error chrome But for now one can only speculate and hope that it comes back until the day it magically appears once again Just like the McRib if you're fortunate enough to drunkenly stumble upon a role of this film then congrats This film was made for 35 millimeter 120 and his legend has it large format. That's just a rumor. I've heard though There's no validity to it. I don't have any evidence of it never seen it before and frankly I could just be making it up now. You might be saying come on. It's 2021 isn't there some way to emulate error chrome? Yes, there are a few ways to get the error chrome look But let's be honest the real thing is always better, but don't let your blow-up doll hear that Probably the easiest way is to just shoot with a digital camera and alter the colors However, you can also try something called try chrome photography with black and white infrared film Furthermore, I also have a very very strong suspicion that there's already a stock out there that when paired with the right filter We'll give you the error chrome look more on that in a future video I know that's not helpful now, but are any of my videos helpful ever? Probably not. No, what am I gonna do with my final role of error chrome? I don't know yet I have an idea to shoot it this year, but it's gonna take a considerable amount of effort on my part and to be frank I'm lazy as sh**. Anyway, that's it drug trip over. I'll see you in two weeks for another video that is nowhere near as exciting I'm sure