Cinestill 800T: A Film Review

Ever since I got into the world of film photography, Cinestill film stocks were the very first ones I was excited to try. After shooting a few rolls of this popular film stock, I can say that this is currently one of my favourite and fun films to shoot, especially in low light.

Cinestill 800T is a Tungsten balanced, colour negative film that is originally made from Kodak motion picture film stock that is repurposed to suit still photography. Its unique halations when photographing neon and bright lights are its defining feature and the effect is instantly recognisable. This is due to the fact that the Remjet layer has been removed, which acts a layer that protects from light piping, static, and halation of highlights in exposure. By removing this layer, the film is able to be developed in C-41 chemicals that are most commonly used in labs for colour negative processing these days.

Note the glowing red halations apparent in bright fluorescent lighting

First Impressions, and what's to love

Living in Australia, film is not cheap, at about $30 a roll, Cinestill 800T is one of the very first films I was excited to try after getting a Canon AE-1 Program as a gift. I shot my first roll at box speed ISO 800 and I cheated a little by using my canon mirrorless as a back up light meter. I was careful to try to nail perfect exposure the first time and some scans

turned out pretty well.

I especially love how the film shines in night scenes, and the red halations weren't too distracting, depending on what I was shooting.

I can say that it produces lovely moody tones that just give it this 'cinematic look' to them. However, in scenes where it was dimly lit and in abundance of neon lighting, I found the halations to be too overpowering such as in this example:

Perhaps underexposing the scene a stop or two would balance out the image, notice the neon overexposure

By the second and third roll I trusted in the in-built meter of my Canon. I figured since I'd be mostly shooting at night, the sweet spot for me was to underexpose one stop or meter for the highlights if you dont want your highlights to be blown out.

Alternatively, shooting outdoors during blue hour (just after the sun has set) might be more ideal if you have a lot of contrasting lights in the scene, to reduce the dynamic range from the highlights to the darkest points of your image.

When shooting portraits, I did notice the grainyness but I didn't think it detracted much from the images, in fact it added some dimension in my opinion.

Even though the film is Tungsten balanced at 3200 kelvin, don't let that restrict you from only shooting in low light and at night. You can definitely shoot this during the day, as Cinestill recommends using a warming filter to shoot in daylight for accurate white balance.

Since I did not have a warming filter, I shot a few images without just to see how the colours would look. Fully expecting to see my images to turn out extremely blue, I was surprised to see it wasn't that apparent.

Things to consider

There isn't much I didn't like about this film stock, but I could understand that halations are not everyone's cup of tea. There were times when it was noticeable and "ruined" the photo for me especially in bright highlights, see examples:

Although the highlights were already blown out, the extra red orb halations just didn't really add to the image. You would probably get better results with other 800 speed film like lomography or portra.

Final thoughts

After shooting a few rolls, I can definitely say this film is wonderful for nightscapes, especially in busy, light filled cities - think of tokyo and hong kong where there's lots of neon and colourful lights. It does also give a cinematic feel to your images, you could easily recreate Wong Kar Wai inspired shots - the dreamy nostalgic vibe that I definitely tried to emulate. I think that this is a film stock that every film enthusiast would at least try once - to challenge your self creatively and to really see the beauty of what night photography has to offer.