elibaum.com

red (eli's version)

05 Nov 2026

Earlier this year I bought some Harman Red 125. It gives a nearly-monochromatic, warm-yet-apocalyptic image. But since it is still color film, other hues sometimes leak through. Apparently, this is the effect you can get by shooting through C-41 film backwards: most of the light is absorbed by the red layer, and not transmitted.

A bit of green leaks through

Due to the unusual color, some scanning equipment has trouble handling these negatives, so the initial scans back from the lab were washed out. I redid these on my grandfather’s 25-year-old Epson Perfection 2450 flatbed, which is still chugging along.

Most of these are from a visit to Chicago in February. We went outside on a very, very cold day. The snow helped bring a lot of light to this very slow film.

Looking south from the bird sanctuary

On the seawall

Lake Michigan, solid

I was not super careful handling the negatives, so some of these have a bit of dust and hair. So it goes.

The Chicago Open…

…and some spectators.

Other spectators.

H does the crossword

J & S in the living room

9LZ 349. An old Packard in Somerville.

The eye of Sauron

The negatives come out a vivid blue:

I was still observing a light leak on many of these shots (the bright vertical stripes). Above, you can also see the leak on the sprocket holes — I think those dark regions are where light spilled onto the right-hand spindle and shone through some of the outer sprocket holes. However, I wasn’t really able to correlate this theory with the geometry of the camera. Some electrical tape on the hinge has seemed to help since then.