Earlier this year, I bought five rolls of Kodak Aerochrome from fellow Shanghai photographer Marc Ressang. I had been intrigued by this false colour infrared aerial surveillance film ever since I saw Irish photographer Richard Mosse’s series, Infra, shot on large format in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kodak Aerochrome was never a consumer film. All rolls in existence were created by US photographer Dean Bennici, who bought up Kodak’s existing stock when they discontinued it about ten years ago. Dean now lives in Germany and is still selling his frozen stock of 120, although he apparently on has “a few hundred” left.

So far, I’ve shot three rolls in Sanya, Shanghai and Zhejiang Provice and recently bought another six, which have been shipped to Melbourne. They are now waiting for me in my parent’s freezer.

This film was used by the US during the Vietnam War to find enemy camouflage, but it was also used for forest surveys and other things.

I initially wanted to have the rolls cross processed, which gives a more subdued look, but there seems to have been a miscommunication with my lab. The first roll came back as slide/transparency film, so I’ve stuck with that for the other two rolls. Healthy foliage comes out pink, red or purple, depending on what kind of filter you use. I have a Wratten 15 deep yellow for my Pentax 645NII medium format camera. It seems just the right camera for this rather expensive film since I get 15 shots from each roll, instead of 12 that I’d get from my Hasselblad 503CW, and the Pentax has phenomenal metering in 1/3 of stops, which is very handy for Aerochrome, which has about the least exposure latitude of anything I’ve shot.

I’ve decided to mainly concentrate on landscapes with my remaining rolls on upcoming trips in Australia and around China. I’m looking forward to it: with this kind of film you really do have to try to make each one count.