Going Green. Greenage.
Several years after launching the Duochrome Yellow 600 film (a brilliant emulsion) and 18 months after launching the Blue 600 “Reclaimed Edition” instant film (a wonderful surprise), Polaroid has launched their new Green 600 “Reclaimed Series” instant film.
And, unsurprisingly — at least to any Polaroid-watchers out there — the new Green 600 film was completely sold out within a week of its release! Luckily, I bought 6 packs on the 1st day of availability, giving me 48 opportunities to test and create with this marvelous new instant film.
WHAT IS GREEN 600?
Green 600 Reclaimed Series is a bold, high-contrast, “duochrome” instant film with only two colors in the emulsion: green and yellow. It has no blacks or whites, with shadows falling into very dark green tones, and highlights popping in bright, yellow-green tones.
You could almost argue that the new Green 600 is a monochrome film with 50 shades of green (or fewer), but those yellow highlights really make it feel like there are two colors with blended tones in between. In this regard Green 600 is most similar to 2023’s Blue 600 film with its shades of blue. Both are in the “Reclaimed Series” of films, which means they are are less designed from scratch, and more accidental-experimental. Both were created by making use of chemistry and materials left over from Polaroid’s normal manufacturing process.
In any case, you must NOT confuse the new Green 600 with Polaroid’s ill-fated Green Duochrome film from a few years back! That chemistry unfortunately used black and green to deliver a limited range of results you might refer to as murky, messy, mediocre, and meh. We can reasonably say that batch was a failed experiment, which should not be repeated. 🙂
But what about Duochrome Yellow? Ahhh… That one is a brilliant, two-color, black-yellow film available, from time-to-time in 600, i-Type and a spectacular 8×10 format. Whenever a new batch is released, I grab as much Duochrome Yellow 600 as I can afford, but sadly, it doesn’t happen often. Overall, it succeeds where the Green Duochrome film failed, because its yellow color is much brighter than the murky green.
EXPECTATIONS
All four duo-chromatic Polaroid film emulsions are very high-contrast, offering very little detail (if any) in the dark shadows, or in the blown-out highlights. Therefore, they all do best with high-contrast subjects, which was anticipated in our test of Green 600 film.
TESTING LIGHT
In the first four test exposures, two subjects were captured in late afternoon light, with and without flash on our test camera. One was a backlit glass sun/face sculpture, and the other was a flat white stool seat with thin shadows on it. Here are the results:
TESTING COLORS
The next two exposures were of subjects with specific colors, to see how Green 600 would treat them. Shot #5 was pointing into a healthy head of Swiss chard with flash on, for a green-on-green immersive capture. Shot #6 was of white wood shingles and a red door in afternoon sun (no flash), all of which converted to yellow-green tones, as expected.
TESTING CONTRAST
The last two exposures in Pack #1 of Green 600 were of subjects in strong afternoon sunlight, creating equally strong shadows and contrast. Shot #7 was a white picket fence with tree shadows on and behind it, which reduced the image to light and dark shapes without detail. Shot #8 was chains on a tree, which similarly reduced the capture to light and dark areas without detail, except for the mid-tones of a blurry background, lurking in the upper left corner of the composition.
Camera: Polaroid SLR 680 SE (circa 1982)
Film: Polaroid GREEN 600 Instant Color Film (new)
Photographer: Russ Murray (vintage)
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
TEST VIDEO
A ninety-second clip from our YouTube channel about testing Pack #1 of Polaroid’s newly-released (already sold out) Green 600 Reclaimed Series instant film.
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