CineStill 800T 120 (shot at 640 ISO), Mamiya 645 Pro TL, 80mm f/1.9. Lighting - two 20"x20" soft boxes and one spot with blue gel.
Cinestill 800T
A large percentage of my work is shot in my studio under continuous tungsten lights. And all of that work is either medium or large format. So when it comes to color, my options are fairly limited. I have a small stash of expired 64T chrome and while it is lovely to shoot with, it is often too slow for what I am trying to do. Faster daylight-balanced C41 film works, but needs color correction. The results are satisfactory, but I am never as pleased with them as I would be with film shot under the proper lighting conditions for that film.
So, imagine my joy when I found out that the Brothers Wright had started an Indiegogo campaign to make CineStill 800T in 120 happen. To say I was happy would be a vast understatement. I have shot the CineStill 800T in 35mm and was really pleased with the results. Having such an amazing option for medium format work in the studio is indeed my “film unicorn.”
CineStill 800T in 35mm (at 1600 ISO), Leicaflex SL, Summicron 50mm f/2.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on some of this marvelous film to test out in the studio. My plan was to try two different lighting and colour set-ups: one, an evenly-lit bright and colorful ode to the technicolor films of the mid-20th century and two, a sci-fi cinema noir set inspired by science fiction classics of the 1970s and 80s. Weather proved difficult to work with and made scheduling a bit of a headache, but I was able to get my little in-house muse to be my slightly disgruntled Eliza Doolittle.
CineStill 800T 120 (shot at 640 ISO), Mamiya 645 Pro TL, 80mm f/1.9. Lighting - two 20"x20" soft boxes.
I developed the film with the Unicolor C41 kit. The negatives were scanned on an Epson V800, using SilverFast 8.8 scanning software. The negatives did cup quite a bit, but a few days under some heavy books made them easy to scan. I used SilverFast iSRD to dust spot. Some very light editing was done in Photoshop, but NO color correction was done on any of the photos in this article. This is how they looked fresh off the scanner.
CineStill 800T 120 (shot at 640 ISO), Mamiya 645 Pro TL, 80mm f/1.9. Lighting - one 20"x20" soft box.
I am happy with the results and am eagerly looking forward to shooting more CineStill 120. And, dare we hope?!?, 4x5.
You can find more information about Cinestill, the film and the company here, and their Indiegogo campaign for CineStill 120 here. They have 10 days left in their campaign, so get on over there and pledge if you can.
Let's make this HAPPEN!
