Lomography LomoChrome Metropolis

Metropolis was Lomography's first ground-up color negative film in over five years when they launched the Kickstarter campaign in July 2019, promising the desaturated, muted-grit look that everyone was emulating in Lightroom presets but baking it into the emulsion itself instead of applying it later. Backers got rolls shipped in December that year, two months ahead of schedule. The math worked. The campaign funded inside days.

The color signature is the entire identity. Reds and oranges punch through while everything else gets pulled toward green and cyan. Skies skew bluish-gray instead of true blue. Foliage stays alive but loses the candy saturation you get from Portra or Ektar. Contrast runs higher than Portra 400 and the grain is noticeably more aggressive, even in 120. Some of that grain is the point; some of it is what happens when you build a color stock with a smaller production scale than Kodak's.

The ISO span is 100 to 400, which gives you about two stops of practical rating range. Most shooters land at 200 in bright light and 400 in overcast or shade. Rate it at 100 in full sun and the muted greens get even softer. Underexpose and the shadows take on a heavy magenta cast that does not always read as intentional. It is unforgiving in the way that experimental stocks tend to be.

Where it works best is urban grit: industrial sites, gray architecture, night-after-rain streets where the muted palette aligns with the subject. It is the wrong film for a beach trip. It is the right film for a Detroit warehouse.

Available in 35mm, 120, 110, and 16mm. The 110 release was a genuine event for users of the format.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second, which puts a metered 30-second exposure at about a minute at the negative. For long night exposures in subway tunnels or under streetlamps, where Metropolis often gets pointed, the correction matters more than it does on a faster Portra.