One Roll Review - Jazzy Blues

 Ultrafine Online  (aka Photowarehouse) has been selling some really off-beat films lately. My curiosity was piqued a while back, and I ordered a couple of rolls of their Jazzy Blues C-41 film.  From their online information - yes, everything would be rendered as a shade of blue, and the intensity depends on the exposure.  From their description:

"Based upon the premise of our popular Ultrafine Colouruption Films, comes a new hue, done in Blue. Another experimental Color Print Film that we have been shooting and having fun with here. Enjoy creating your own slow blues medley with this fine grain, standard C-41 process color print film. Very Slow. Can be shot at ISO 6, 12, up to 25.  C-41 Process. Fun and Experimental"

So, as an "experimental film" what should I shoot with it?  I loaded my Nikon FE2 with the Jazzy Blues film, and set it at ISO 25.  I carried it around while doing my normal shooting and eventually finished the roll.  I sent it into The Darkroom Lab for standard C-41 processing, and scanned the film myself on my Epson V700 scanner.

First of all, the film appears to be on a Mylar base, and there is no orange C-41 masking as you would expect from a typical C-41 color film.  The negatives were yellow, so the emulsion appears to lack cyan and magenta layers.  It seems very fine-grained, so I am guessing that the film was originally used for some process in the cine industry. It's unlike any film that I have shot previously.

While I shot it at ISO 25, I think that ISO 12 may have been a better idea, so my next roll will be shot at ISO 12.  It definitely is contrasty in direct sum, which is okay. One image from Ivy Creek Falls looks pretty darn good for a long exposure. 

When I played around with the histogram in post, I could achieve some VERY wild results. I did some histogram improvements before the scans, and some looked pretty good, others, not so much.  As an experimental film, it is a lot of fun to see what I got for the results.  It's pretty slow, so I suggest a tripod for the best results. 

trippy post effects can be achieved!

Here are a bunch of images from my first roll. It's certainly an odd-ball kind of film, but if you are looking for something that's really outside the norm for shooting, you should give it a try.  At less than $5/roll for 36 exposures, it's a bargain for experimenting with.  It certainly ought to make portraiture interesting.