Yodica Polaris 400

Yodica Polaris 400 covers the entire frame in a cool blue veil with reddish vignetting in the corners, which makes it the calmest of the Yodica lineup and the one most likely to read as a real photograph rather than a special effect. The base is Kodak Gold or ColorPlus 200, pre-exposed in Milan by Marco Barbereschi and Cinzia Cancedda since 2018 and respooled into 36-exposure cartridges. C-41, no DX coding, 35mm only.

Where Antares paints a directional sky and Vega does a sunset gradient, Polaris is a wash. The blue sits across the whole image like a cool filter glued to the inside of the camera. The corner red is gentler than a true vignette and reads as edge warming rather than a frame. The overall impression is wintery. Snowscapes look colder. Skin tones go slightly icy. Reds in the scene fight the cast and end up purple, which is part of the look.

Rated at ISO 400, though the underlying 200 emulsion loses about a stop to the pre-exposure. The blue cast deepens with underexposure, which is how most Yodica shooters dial in the effect. Rate at 800 and the wash gets heavy. Rate at box speed and the original photograph still wins through.

A reasonable comparison is Lomochrome Turquoise, except Polaris is much less aggressive. Turquoise inverts and shifts the whole palette; Polaris just tints. If you want something between a normal Kodak Gold scan and a fully alien color shift, Polaris sits in that gap. Night and overcast pull the most consistent results because there is less competition from the scene's own color.

Available in 35mm 36 exposure only. No 120, no sheet, no other formats from Yodica for any of their films.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A five-second meter reading becomes about seven and a half seconds; a 30-second reading turns into roughly 60. For long blue-hour exposures where the cast and the actual light overlap, results are harder to predict than the math suggests. Bracket if the shot matters.