Rollei Redbird, Creative Edition Film

Having seen some really nice results and being totally intrigued by the name of this film I had to get some and try the Rollei Redbird, Creative Edition film. I got the film in both 120 and 35mm formats but started out with the 35mm version in my Pentax ZX-L.

I really had no idea what to expect or how to manipulate the film since it is essentially regular film shot backwards through the base side rather than the emulsion side. I am told that this is achieved by rolling the film backwards onto the spool. The film ends up with a “reddish” look due to the color shift that occurs when the red layer gets exposed first rather than last.

The other thing that happens is that the film loses at least one stop film speed so that I suspect the Rollei Redbird (ISO=400) film is actually Rollei Nightbird film (ISO = 800) that has been reversed when rolling it onto the spool.

My two biggest concerns were whether I would get the results I wanted by just shooting the film at box speed (ISO=400), and whether The Darkroom would remember to reverse the film when scanning to give me the image I wanted rather than the reverse image derived from scanning the usual side.

Both of those concerns were addressed in my first roll of film. From the image above you can see that shooting at box speed does not yield the best results although there is a certain “something” that makes this a compelling image. 

My other concern was quickly realized too. The Darkroom scanned my negatives as they would any other film so that my images came out backwards. This is not a huge problem since I easily flipped them in post processing but I would have thought they would have known better.

I will be trying this film again but I likely will experiment with longer exposures to see if I can optimize the exposure times for the best combination of shadow detail and the “redscale effect.”