Cross Processing or XPro the act of developing film specifically colour in the wrong chemicals.

Yes, you just read that right, I purposefully got some film developed wrong.

It sounds weird I know, putting your slide film in chemicals made for colour negative film, or colour negative in slide film chemicals. But as of late I’ve been getting into a bit of a lo-fi vibe, so I figured it was about time to try out some cross processing. The Lomographic Society markets film that is designed for cross processing, called aptly XPro. Just between us, it is actually old Agfa slide film stock just re-branded on the canister. Developing the film as slide film (which it is natively) brings out wonderful colour and resolution, so it was the film I was going to try out.

Lomography XPro 100 developed as Slide Film

So I loaded in a roll of Lomography’s XPro 100 film into my trusty Nikon FM2 and the 50mm 1.4 lens and hit the streets of Toronto.

Now I had seen XPro photos in the past, and wasn’t really that keen on the look, but I went into the project knowing that the results might be a bit…weird, but I was ready for that. Of course there was a call from the lab making sure that I wasn’t being an idiot for requesting that the slide film be processed in colour negative chemistry, and me reassuring them that yes, I really wanted it done this way and that I wasn’t an idiot.

The results were…much better than I expected, of course there were several shots that really didn’t turn out that well, cross processing is not good when you’re shooting in very low light, but in the bright sun earlier in the day, the results were actually pretty fantastic.

See for yourself!

Most of these were shot straight from the hip, very little attention was paid to the settings (Sunny-16 metering). Would I do it again…most definitely.