Flic Film’s New Psychedelic Street Film
If you follow me on Instagram or even have read some of my previous articles on film stocks, you know I am a huge fan of the little Alberta company called Flic Film. I use their developers for my black and white film; I buy their negative archival sheets; and their Flic Film Elektra 100 is pretty much my go-to colour film. Recently, I have been very happy with the results I got from their new Aurora 800 film and so when I saw them release two new colour options (Psychedelic Street & Street Savy) that were both 400 speed film I was pretty excited. While I am not sure about current stock, if you want to try out either, Camera Traders usually has both of these available.
Flic Film does not to my knowledge, actually make any film as all from scratch. Mostly they are taking film produced for movie making and respooling it onto 35mm rolls. Others like Elektra are films that were produced for other reasons, in that case for aerial photography. One thing I know about Flic Film, is they usually do not go out of their way to say what the source film is inside the package. That is definitely true for the film I am reviewing here today, Psychedelic Street 400. The only tidbit of a clue as to what film it is, came from a line in a Reddit post that posited that it is the same as the Orwo NC500. I tried out that film a couple of years ago and going back to look at those photos, I can see a definite similarity.
The marketing behind Psychedelic Street has been focused on getting photos with a retro feel. I suppose that there is something to that but for whatever reason in these photos they just look like they have a green cast and are quite muddy. It doesn’t seem to help to overexpose it either. I have taken two rolls of pictures now and I was quite disappointed with the first roll. I thought maybe it was just me, but after getting the second one back, I can say that the look is not something I love. It might work for a specific project if I was wanting to recreate a certain feel, but not for just the everyday around town pictures that I like to take. I have included some of the better pictures from the two rolls here for you to see. I would suppose that it does well with yellows and so if you are wanting to have something with a yellow subject it seems to make that stand out. It might also be fun for a portrait set too. I currently have a roll of the Street Savy in my Nikon FE so once I get that developed I will try to put up a review of that as well. I have heard good things and the pictures I have seen online look really nice as well.
Have a look at my photos on Psychedelic Street and let me know what you think in the comments! Also if you want to see some photos of mine that I do like, I still have my Reflective Reflex show going on at Mile Zero Coffee Company until February 15th.