A 35 mm roll of Yodica Polaris ISO 400 film arrived in my life as a part of EMULSIVEsanta19. I had discussed in a previous posting on special effect films that I was not a great fan of them. But when you receive a gift you should go out and try it. And So I did.
I took the Yodica Polaris on what turned out to be my last opportunity to go into Denver and meet up with friends a couple of weeks before the lockdown. Our friend, Thomas Carr, was having an exposition at the University of Denver, and he arranged for us to see it on a Sunday. So I began my efforts with Polaris and my I shot the roll with my Minolta X-700 / Tamron 28-200mm manual lens on the college campus and local coffee shop, and finished up at my neighborhood park.
But let’s talk about the Yodica Polaris Film first. There are a lot of ads for Yodica films and summaries of all their films, but no in depth reviews. Just the basics like you’ll find in the EMULSIVE Film List.
Polaris film is described as adding graded soft blue tones to the image. Most of the examples that you will find online have quite dramatic effects. Mine do not. Let’s take a look and I’ll explain the difference.
You can see a blue effect turning to a soft fuschia at the edges. But mine are very subtle and in fact that saved the images for me and made them likeable. So what happened? I typically keep a UV filter on all of my lenses. I do this to protect the lens from damage because I tend to lose or misplace lens caps. Also because I typically use rangefinders, and well you know what happens when you leave that lens cap on by mistake!
My results here show that the Polaris-blue effect must be enhanced by UV light. This effect was reduced by my filter. But I like the subtle effect, what do you think?
~ Kathleen
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