Anyone shooting Cinestill?

[Steve M.]

The colour shots look like a hybrid of Agfa Optima with Velvia. My favorites are the B&W stuff though. Real old timey look.

Many years ago I used a motion picture film stock from Seattle Film Works when I lived in Portland. Not sure it was the same film, but you had to bring it back to them for processing, as no one else would do it. It didn't look anything like the shots I see here though. Maybe the C41 processing gives it that over saturated look w/ odd colours.

 

[znapper]

Cinestill is bringing "their own" Cinestill Cs41 developing kit to the market.

Unfortunately, it looks like just another repackaged C-41 kit (with Blix). Not sure why they didn't make a proper ECN-2 kit available to the buyers of their Cinestill films?

Anyway, I did a little comparison processing Vision3 5203 50D (same as Cinestill 50) in different chemicals. I knew that I will get a picture with all the alternative processing methods, I was rather more interested in how much work will be needed to get to the final picture after scanning.

Here it goes:
1. Standard C-41, 3:15@38°C (FujiHunt C-41 X-Press kit; separate Bleach and Fix)
2. RA-4, 3:00@38°C (Compard Digbase RA-4 print kit; full strength Developer; Bleach and Fix from C-41 kit)
3. ECN-2, 3:00@41°C (ECN-2 developer according to published formulae; Bleach and Fix from C-41 kit)

I tried to match the scans in Lightroom, but didn't go after every single difference. Some did need more work than others.

Did you see any big difference between c-41 processed and ECN-2 processed to begin with?

I get perfectly fine results in c-41, but I really don't know how the 50D is supposed to look 🙂

 

[znapper]

Hats off for Cinestill, they do great work.
I shoot the Vision3 500T and 50D, as I cannot stand the halos when the remjet is pre-removed.



50D
Leica_CZ50_J3_Kodak_50D27 by Ole-Henrik Helin, on Flickr

500T
Bessa_r3m_VL40_Kodak_Vision3_80006 by Ole-Henrik Helin, on Flickr

 

[brbo]

The colour shots look like a hybrid of Agfa Optima with Velvia. My favorites are the B&W stuff though. Real old timey look.

Many years ago I used a motion picture film stock from Seattle Film Works when I lived in Portland. Not sure it was the same film, but you had to bring it back to them for processing, as no one else would do it. It didn't look anything like the shots I see here though. Maybe the C41 processing gives it that over saturated look w/ odd colours.

This was not to show the colors but the difference between developers used. Hence the exaggerated saturation and contrast.

My usual processing is less aggressive:







But it's a negative film. Does IT have "a look"?! Or YOU make the look?

 

[brbo]

Did you see any big difference between c-41 processed and ECN-2 processed to begin with?

I get perfectly fine results in c-41, but I really don't know how the 50D is supposed to look 🙂

Who does?! 😉

I think the difference between ECN-2 and C-41 is obvious (looking at the negatives) and is bigger than between RA4 and ECN-2 (with shorter time or higher dilution of RA4 I could probably get the negative of RA4 even closer to ECN-2 densities). There are links to raw files and inverted files under each shots. You can play with them and subject them to your usual PP regime. If you would like I can also make linear raw files (no gamma) available later today...

 

[dmr]

I thought I posted this one here but I guess not.

This is a Cinestill 50D shot I took last year of "The Most Awesome View In The Known Universe" (tm) using the Pentax with the Sigma ultrawide. It was processed in the plain vanilla C41 chemistry that the local photo lab uses in their Fuji Frontier.

The web image does not do justice to the photo! The 13x19 print is stunning and virtually grainless.

The images totally make up for the Bad Hair Day conditions of walking up/down to the overlook! 🙂

 

[SaveKodak]

I was most interested in their 50D stock. 800T seems pointless to me considering Portra pushes to 800 without blinking and Portra 800 also exists. It's kind of interesting for mixed light but Portra actually balances back pretty well so IDK. Not for me. As for their B&W stock, no. We have a lot of still B&W stocks that need love and cost a lot less.

However, when I shot a lot of 50D on a trip to Block Island, beautiful weather, sunny and partly cloudy days...all I got back was low contrast and weird color. My exposures were good, I was using an F100 and often a Sekonic meter. It's encouraging though to see some normalized results here. Maybe I'll try another roll to see what I can get.

Just to be further contrarian though... It didn't seem to me that the grain was markedly less than Portra 160 or Ektar. Just further thoughts that lead me to think it's not much more than a gimmick.

 

[sara]

I use Kodak 500T and my local lab processes it.
But they have said to me that they didn't like Cinestill because of the watermarks on the film (I guess from after removing the remjet).

 

[Huss]

BTW, which is which? Which looks best to you?

the last one

 

[Huss]

Cinestill 800

 

[brbo]

the last one

I think the last one looks best, too.

The last one is, not surprisingly, processed in ECN-2. #1 is RA-4, #2 is C-41.

 

[kuvvy]

Made a mistake with my first roll. Shot the 800 version at 50 ISO. Still managed to get some decent results.

[/url]73410026 by kuvvy, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[kuvvy]

[/url]73410032 by kuvvy, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[kuvvy]

[/url]73410035 by kuvvy, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[fjolnir]

I like the colors from it a lot.

Cinestill 800 Scanned via DSLR:

 

[dmr]

I'm planning to do some night shots of the LV Strip with Cinestill 800 in a few weeks.

 

[BlackXList]

I've grabbed some 50D because of this thread.

And now I'm going "it's winter, I should have thought this through" haha I'll get it shot though.

 

[dmr]

This is one from the roll of Cinestill 800 I shot in Las Vegas late last week using the GIII.

This is the second roll of Cinestill 800, balanced for Tungsten, that I've shot. I expected more color shift than I got. I do see some greenish shift in a few places.

This image I'm posting is very much a "before" post processing example, not a finished photo I would display or one of the best from the roll. It was processed by the local lab in the Fuji Frontier and I scanned it with the 10 year old K-M SD IV. All I did in Gimp was to set white and black points, bump the curve up a wee bit, and use the healing brush on maybe 5 or so spots.

This one was probably 1/30, hand-held of course, auto exposure.

It will probably look better when de-noised in Neat Image and perhaps sharpened a bit.

I do see some artifact, like those two lighter "clouds" just to the right of the centerline at the top of the image. I think those are probably light contamination from something in the area. LOL, I also see I have a bit of the negative edge visible in the upper right corner.