While I have been online, I have been researching film stocks as part of my journey back into film photography. I hate saying film photography or digital photography — to me it is just photography — but I digress. I am talking about film stocks.
One film stock that interested me was Cinestill 800T. It looked really interesting to use, particularly at night with lights. The lack of a halation layer on the film means that bright lights are surrounded by a red ring and bloom slightly.
An open mic night at my local village hall provided a great opportunity to test this film and get some imagery to use on the Village Hall’s website.
The camera I used was the Voigtländer Bessa R with the Jupiter-8 lens. I know that the Nikon F501 has the 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is faster, but I just don’t enjoy the shooting experience of using it compared with the rangefinder. Plus, it is just too noisy.
No one really noticed me taking photographs. The camera is a lot smaller and less assuming than modern-day cameras. Although, when I did my shift at the bar, the camera did pique curiosity — I guess these days a film camera can be a bit of an oddity.
I used the camera’s internal meter. Initially I used an external meter, but I soon saw they matched within ½ to one stop, so I stopped bothering. In the end, I think I mostly shot at f/2 and 1/30 sec, as the performers were fairly static.
One thing I had a little issue with was focusing. It was hard to see the focus aid, as the LED stage lighting was pretty dim.
The hall was pretty dark, as I said earlier, and combined with the slow shutter speed meant that I didn’t get as many keepers as I would like. The first thing that I liked — though not to everyone’s taste — was the characteristics of the Jupiter-8 lens combined with the Cinestill 800T film. It created a lovely blooming around the brightly lit faces on the stage. Also, the mixed lighting resulted in colour shifts across the frame and slight colour separation in motion blur, which I particularly like in how this was rendered by Cinestill.
I am looking forward to shooting Cinestill 800T again for some street photography at night. It will definitely be getting packed in the bag for my next trip to Valencia. Although I think next time I use it in darker conditions, I would probably push it one stop. I definitely want to try a 120 version of that for my new Mamiya 645 — but more on that later.
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