 Today's episode is sponsored by Surfshark VPN. Yo, what it do? It do not much with me. Your favorite purple film company, Lymography, released a brand new color negative film stock. Yeah, you heard that right. And I'm not shitting you or on you. It's a new color negative formula that you've never seen before. And it's finally here. It's called Lomo 92. I don't know why it's called Lomo 92. So literally don't ask me. I swear to God, if I see that in the comments even once, I'll have to chug a flaming hot Mountain Dew or something. It's entirely possible. They're referencing the year in 1992, the year after the worst year of my life. Lomo was kind enough to reach out with a pre-production role for me to test. My upstairs neighbors are making a lot of noise because they have no spatial awareness. But like always, my opinions on it are my own and I'm gonna use whatever nouns, adjectives, or LaCroix flavors that I want to. No holds barred. But listen up, mother. I should probably level with you. I have grown very weary of doing film stock reviews and I don't much care for it these days. That's it, there is no but. So with my usual optimism at an all-time high, I hit the deep, sketchy underbelly of L.A.'s farmer's markets for some street photography with Caleb. Okay. Anyway, I grabbed my Nikon F2 and shoved some of this new unknown Lomo 92 straight up the heart of darkness. I'm waiting for the day that I open up back to load film and there's film in there. It's gonna happen eventually. She's done it before. No, I haven't, I'm perfect. Okay. Lomo 92 was a 400 speed film, which is a good ISO to chill at for most things. A lot of the pre-production samples that I saw of Lomo 92 looked like maybe they could have used a little bit more light. So I preemptively decided to shoot this role at 320 ISO just for a little extra sauce. Other negative film generally does well with overexposure anyway. Shooting street or in this case, farmer's market in L.A. is definitely a different experience for sure. I should be used to it by now, but it's always gonna be a little uncomfortable having literally everyone stare at you and your camera constantly, including pissed off food stand ladies. In New York, it seems like literally no one gives a sh** and that's kinda nice. But before we dive any deeper into Lomo 92, I'd like to first thank today's sponsor, Surfshark VPN, for making this all possible. Uh-oh, I'm on the floor because I was blown away from the computer by today's amazing opportunity. Here's the rub. If you're like me and you're constantly moving through different markets across the globe, you may start to realize that there are geo restrictions on some content and that's not super cash money for us. Enter Surfshark VPN. 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And what I personally love is that Surfshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So what are you waiting for? Get it while it's hot. You can find the link to Surfshark VPN in the description below and you can use code grainydays to get an extra three months of Surfshark for free. Lomography has been doing some interesting things over the years and personally, I think they've gained some respect from me. Sure, they do make some film stocks that make you question if reality is just a trip on Toad Venom but they also put out some stocks that aren't half bad. I have been power slamming the crap out of some Lomo Red Scale lately and I know I'm not the only one out there. Lomo 800 is another film stock that's just downright filthy as well. But is Lomo 92 a solid addition to their portfolio? Upon first impressions, yeah, I think so. It's definitely very blue and not just like normal blue. Advanced blue, which kind of leaves a lot of the other colors of the spectrum to not really have so much of a fighting chance. It feels to me like a cool summertime film. The way it renders the color blue is very interesting and I think it would probably go well with warmer colors. Like this shot with the tablecloth and the overhead yellow canopy contrasted against the turquoise blue sunlight spillover. Hold up. Did the PCP just kick in or does this film stock have a slight halation to it? Blue halation. I guess halation can be any color depending on how the layers of the emulsion are stacked. I mean, it's pretty well controlled and it doesn't really appear in most shots. It could be a lens artifact, edge chroma or whatever. The problem is I've never really seen that kind of artifact with the Leica R35-70. It's a super sharp and well corrected lens, even on digital. Let's see, here's some high contrast Kodak gold that I shot with the same lens and camera setup and I'm not really seeing anything similar, which leads me to believe that it is coming from the film. Weird. Cool, but weird. I would go so far as to dare to say that this film stock almost kind of seems like it leans maybe a little bit more towards the tungsten white balance. The colors do look a little bit colder overall in direct daylight and then more normal under artificial light. But what does normal even mean anyway, right? My hot male doctor hasn't seen a normal heart rate for me in years. Grain, yes, it certainly has that too. I would almost say that this stock leans truer to a 250 ISO film stock, but that's just kind of a guess. I don't know if Lumography's gonna do that thing they do where they give you an ISO range to shoot at. My pre-production role said 400 on it, so that's probably that. I mean, who cares anyway? ISO is made up, it's a construct, just like taking vitamins and eating vegetables. Anyway, after wandering through the nearly endless farmer's market maze like Tri-Wizard competitors Cedric Diggory and that other guy from that one movie, we grabbed some food for a quick lunch. Wait, you're too cool for it? It's disgusting. To show you kind of what we're working with as sort of a base on this film stock, in Negative Lab Pro, I left all the settings on the default pre-saturation and the Naritsu color model in the control panel. Usually I left the tone panel to default lab standard and the white balance to auto-neutral. No further adjustments were made after the fact, except that I cropped the images to four three, but that's just a personal preference. And just for curiosity's sake, here's what it looks like with the white balance set on auto-warm. Wow. Anyway, as we clearly wandered into the red light district of the farmer's market, I started to ponder where this film came from exactly. Don't get me wrong, it's cool that we're seeing a brand new film stock in 2023, but one does have to ask themselves, how is that possible? Lomography doesn't actually have a factory itself to manufacture film and it's kind of a hard process because it involves chemicals and chemicals explode sometimes. It's hard to say where it's from exactly. All you can really do is guess or you just have to ask Lomography yourself, but chances are they won't tell you a damn thing. Either way, here's the little cheat code for this film stock. Shoot warm colored things with it, like orange, yellow and red. The stock leans bluer than a smurf taint, so if complimentary colors and the whole Hollywood teal and orange thing has taught us anything, you can't really go wrong pairing these two tones together. Like this. Not exactly a great photo, but the colors sure do grab your attention nicely. Anyway, that about does it. Of the 36 exposure roll, I had about 30 keepers, but that's kind of a vague term here. I was really more focused on giving you a sense of how the film performs instead of anything that really flexes my creative muscle. Portfolio shots, I don't know. This one's my favorite because of the colors and this one is an honorable mention as well. Closing thoughts, I don't have many because critical thinking is dangerous headache territory. I would say overall, Lomo 92 has a nice vintage look and that's kind of a good thing because it's quite different than other film stocks that are currently available. It almost kind of has the same feel as like Lomo Metropolis, except if Lomo Metropolis had color and wasn't diagnosed with depression. The colors aside from the color blue render in a very pastel way, which is nice. And there seems to be some magenta coming in from somewhere. Maybe the highlights, I don't know. At the moment, all I do know is that this film stock will be coming to 120 and 110, probably people out there who say that size does matter. But hey, Lomo, where's four by five and eight by 10? I would happily extend my pledge to get a Lomography tattoo if you deliver this emulsion in large format. And yeah, I guess finally if this film stock was a LaCroix flavor, it would probably be a passion fruit, maybe. Not quite God tier guava, but not nearly as as cold medicine cherry blossom. And just a casual reminder because aggressive reminders are unnecessary sometimes. Today's episode was sponsored by Surfshark. You can find more information and some links in the description below.