Every couple of years my college buddies get together around Labor Day Weekend to hang out. This year we stayed at the house of one of our uncles, on Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York. I miss this area quite a lot, we spent some time here when I was a boy and it was great to make it back to such a beautiful spot. There was some hanging around as you can see, board games, lots of meals, generally stuff that we did together when we all lived in Columbus. Flying into Rochester, NY and staying around the Finger Lakes I of course left all my Fujifilm stocks at home.
The roll of Cinestill 800T was downright ancient, I think I’d had it in my fridge for almost four years and it looks rather grainy. It’s also the first roll I’d shot in a while and I did shoot it outside now and again, with my orange filter. That worked better than the first time I tried. Strangely, I had to work with the indoor shots much more to find an acceptable color temperature (not my strong suit). I was anticipating some late nights in near-darkness and the T-Max 3200 definitely came through for me there, this is the second roll of the stuff that I’ve shot. One of my goals was to take a good portrait of each of my friends, though there was some resistance to that. I got a pretty good shot of most everybody (and they even turned the camera on me once or twice too). I also tried a cigar for the first time ever and puked my guts out about half an hour later (then it became a true college party); ironic that one of my buddies had mentioned earlier that he never took whisky and cigars together for just that reason, and I had to learn the hard way too…power of suggestion?
The T-Max 3200 was bought last year (in an order from Cinestill). I think I’m acquiring a bit of a taste for this film: the grain is certainly pronounced (in fact compare it to the last time I pushed Tri-X to 1600), but I love the moodiness that it gives the pictures. In fact next time we get together I might just keep it all black & white because I’m a bigger fan of that roll of 3200 than anything else I shot. Then I could roll out the f/1.4 Yellow 50; this time I knew I wanted to shoot some Cinestill 800T so I brought out the 1.8/55 SMC Takumar.
So is the 3200 really any better than pushing Tri-X to 3200? I honestly don’t know, I’ve only pushed Tri-X to 1600. I have heard that the results can be a bit unpredictable to go beyond 1600, but then perhaps I should put that to the test myself. Or maybe look at T-Max 3200 shot at 1600, to compare the grain. It does look very grainy, more than I would have thought. Where does the T-grain have its limitations? The outside night shots here were T-Max 400 shot at 3200; it might not be the most scientific comparison, but I don’t see much difference.
