Psych Blues #4 – film review!

Earlier in the year, a person I follow on Instagram posted some incredible film photos that they had taken with rainbows light leaks across the frame. It was so cool looking! It’d been a while since I’d played around with film that wasn’t instant but this made me want to get back into traditional film immediately. Luckily, it was pretty easy to find out what she was using based on her hashtags. That’s how I discovered Psych Blue Film.

Psych Blues Film is a pre-exposed experimental film. There are different batches that are exposed to different things that you shoot over resulting in totally unique images. It’s a regular 35mm film so you can use it in any camera (…that takes 35mm film, of course) and it can be developed anywhere the processes film.

We were just about to leave on June’s epic roadtrip so I used that as my excuse to splurge. I bought two rolls, #3 and #4. Although all their films look really neat, I was most excited about #4. This film has been pre-exposed to holographic paper resulting in a wide array of colors that fade in and out between the frames. I could not wait to use it in the desert!

I’ve attached all the images from the roll that weren’t already included in this post so you can get a better idea of how it all turned out.

Overall, I feel a bit like the dinosaur below about the results. He looks super stoked to you, right!? I feel like he looks like he just saw his two best dino pals get engaged. I think they tuned out really fun. At first, I was a little underwhelmed with them, or perhaps, I was overwhelmed with how busy it made some of the frames. Now every time I look through them I like them more and more.

That being said, I’m glad that I shot this vacation with other cameras and didn’t rely solely on this roll of film to capture my memories because of course, it is an experimental film. If I had been counting on a certain shot to look a super specific way, I’d be disappointed. Nothing really turned out exactly how I pictured but that’s what’s so fun about it. It’s all a surprise! I love how unique they all are.

Would I purchase Psych Blues film again? Absolutely! I’m super excited to shoot another roll! It’s completely renewed my interest in traditional film so expect to see lots of film on the blog in 2020!

Shot with Pentax K1000 on Psych Blue film #4. Developed + scanned by The Darkroom.