The Revolog Tesla shots

Time to have a little fun with two rolls of film that just came to my mailbox.  And hopefully by “fun,” I mean that I can win some awards with these shots.

Revolog is a specially prepared Austrian 35mm film that is pre-marked with effects and textures.  Although you can take normal pictures with this film, the film’s surface has been pre-treated with various color globs and scratches and mysterious effects, many of which will only show up after development.  Each roll costs €7, and the hand-crafted rolls come in different formulas -including Volvox (big green blobs on the film), Lazer (green-blue wavy lines on the film), Kolor (gradient color shifts from frame to frame), among others.

Yawn.  Meh.  This is definitely for the lo-fi lomography crew.  Maybe there’s something else here –

Hello… here’s a pack of Revolog film called Tesla.

Tesla?  As in this guy Tesla?

No, not that Tesla, Chuck…

There were two flavors of Revolog Tesla film; Tesla 1 would produce blue-white electric crackles on film, Tesla 2 would produce red-white electric crackles, just like the kind of lightning sparks one would find in a Tesla Coil.  I purchased one of each cartridge, and counting shipping from Germany, I spent €30 ($42) on the two cartridges of experimental film.

On Monday, two canisters of 12-shot 35mm film arrived at the Town and Village.  Awesome.  I’m going to put these in my camera right now and take a picture of –

Oh.  I need to take a picture of SOMETHING.  Or else this whole project doesn’t work.

I need something that would look super-awesome if there were lightning crackles in the pictures.  I can’t have a bright sky in the picture, or else the lightning crackles won’t show up as clearly.  And this is 200-speed film.  If I took a picture of Usain Bolt with this film, it would look more like I photographed Usain Blur.

So let’s take a camera walk, shall we?

I started with the red-lightning Tesla 2 pack, and loaded it into my Nikon F100 camera.  Twelve shots, I gotta make ’em count.  A few shots here and there around the Capital District – just photographing some of my favorite subjects and buildings and monuments and whatnot.

Then, I dropped the film off at my local Walgreens.  A couple of hours later… ding, film is done.

First shots – downtown Albany, near the old Olympic Bar on South Pearl Street.

Then a couple of shots Wednesday morning in downtown Troy.  Here’s the Green Island Bridge in Revolog…

And a couple of shots of the Uneeda Biscuit ghost sign that’s just off Route 2…

A few shots of the Coca-Cola ghost sign in Schenectady…

And a street sign for Edison Avenue.  Hmm… Edison versus Tesla.  I think there’s a cartoon from theoatmeal.com that would chronicle that battle.

So what do you think?

I’ll tell you what I think.  I’m going to shoot with the other roll in the next few days.  And if these initial tests work out as well as I hope…

I may buy another roll or two of this Revolog film… either this compound or some of their others…

Because this is really catching my interest.

If you know what I mean.