The Aerochrome Project

Earlier in 2024 I was fortunate to get my hands on some Kodak Aerochrome, a color infrared film that had many iterations since the early 1940's until the film was discontinued in 2009. The film was originally developed for military reconnaissance and aerial photography to detect camouflage. If you're unfamiliar, Aerochrome is an infrared sensitive, false-color film that produces an otherworldly look, turning trees and vegetation a vibrant red or pink color.

Since the film was discontinued, it has become a bit of a collector's item as it is rare, difficult to buy, and extremely expensive. If you take a look on eBay, you'll see maybe one or two rolls that range from $200 to $300. Oh, and did I mention that some of those are 120 film (medium format) which will only yield 10 to 12 exposures? Yikes.

I did NOT purchase the roll I used, but was generously gifted one by Jeff Welt who is an incredible photographer that shot my wedding. He has a small stash for a pending project of his own, so it was incredibly kind of him to share a roll with me.

Let's talk about the gear I used, general thoughts, and some photos. I am not going to get into the technical details of the film as there are many great resources out there that cover how to expose and shoot Aerochrome.

The Gear

I used my Leica M6 from 1987 with 28mm Summilux and 50mm Summilux lenses. My M6 is rock solid and I love shooting with it. The meter is incredible accurate and I've never had any issues getting great exposures. Shooting Aerochrome requires a filter, and I used a B+W 52mm 099 IR filter for Color Infrared EIR Aerochrome. There are many different filters (yellow, orange, etc.) suggested for shooting this film, but they too are also hard to come by on eBay. When you do find one, you'll potentially pay a premium. My specific filter cost $130 before shipping from Europe.

General Notes

• Roll was shot in Tuscany, Italy (around Montalcino area) in May 2024, and the Adirondack Mountains (NY) in September 2024.
• This particular batch was claimed to be 30yrs+ expired. Really old stuff and that made me nervous.
• You can see the film has light leaks and scratches, especially in the early frames. There are more light leaks further into the roll. This film was hand rolled and I'm not sure if this happened as a result of that, or during development at the lab.
• We have no idea how this roll was handled before Jeff got a hold of it himself. He stored it in a freezer, as did I before I took it to Europe and between shootings. This is recommended for storage in an attempt to preserve the film.
• I discovered that Europe is incredibly inflexible regarding hand-checking items through security checkpoints for air travel. Unsure what sort of damage could've happened with security scans, but I had it (and other film) in a xray protection bag.

Select Photos

The full set of photos can be found on my Glass Series in full resolution.

Reflections

I was looking at a ton of Aerochrome examples before I shot this, so my expectations were all sorts of crazy for how this should have come out. By the looks of it, I underexposed the film. Especially the shots in Tuscany, given the roll's age. I need to take a look at the negatives to see if I can get a better result with some tweaking for the scans.

As photographers, we're our harshest critics. Initially, I was disappointed in the results. Being disappointed in the results is an unfair self-assessment given this is the first and potentially only chance to shoot this film. I could see you (any viewer) still thinking it's super cool and came out well vs what I measure myself against for examples that are much older than current times. Overall, it is still really cool, and only I really know what the scenes look like in person (unless you've been there yourself).

I'm not sure if I'll ever get another chance to shoot Aerochrome, but I'm glad I did. Thanks again, Jeff, and can't wait to see your project!