I’ve been thinking about Cinestill 800T again recently, mostly because of seeing how other people are using this film, and I wanted to chime in a bit more. Going back to my writeup from last month, I just wanted to make it clear that a lot of the time, this film doesn’t look very good right out of the scanner, so be encouraged. I’m seeing a lot of people posting Cinestill images raw, and they just don’t look right. Remember: adjust the curves. Here’s what I mean:
before after
Just a bit too much blue.
I almost never get images I like right away with this film. It’s not so much of a problem, as long as I’m willing to take a few minutes to adjust some things in Post. What it means however, is that knowing ahead of time that I’m going to have to tweak it after scanning, I’m only going to shoot it for projects where I’m willing to put in that extra time to get it looking right.
One more thing: this entire roll needed adjustment except for the absolute last exposure. For some reason, that one came out looking fine, despite the fact that the shots right before it, taken literally one foot from each other, are as blue as everything else. Out of the entire roll, this one was fine:
Too bad I fudged the focus
The guy at the camera store said maybe the color temperature of the lights was different, I don’t think that’s right. I think it has to do with this camera (Pentax SF-1) having a plastic window on the back that I forgot to tape over. If that’s the case though, just look at how well I was able to salvage those shots! If you’re shooting the 800T (or any of the Kodak motion picture film being repackaged by Cinestill or other companies) and it doesn’t look right, don’t be discouraged with the results you’re getting! Pull it into Photoshop, Lightroom, whatever you can get a hold of and start adjusting curves or color balance, add some contrast maybe.
That’s all I have for now. Merry Christmas to everyone, I probably won’t be back on until next year.
