Cinestill 50D

jonmanjiro

jonmanjiro

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Interesting film. Has anyone else used it?

The colours certainly pop like no other colour negative film I've used. Very slide film like. There does seem to be something of a QC issue though - see the horizontal lines in the sky in the last two shots below. I'm assuming its some kind of artifact related to removal of the remjet layer.


Cinestill 50D by Jon, on Flickr


Cinestill 50D by Jon, on Flickr


Cinestill 50D by Jon, on Flickr


Cinestill 50D by Jon, on Flickr


Cinestill 50D by Jon, on Flickr
 
Just picked a few rolls last week. Waiting for the snow to melt before I try it. I like some of the pics I've seen taken with this film.

Jim B.
 
One thing strange was these weird green dots on a couple of frames. Anyone know what the cause might be? They're on the film.

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33521711666_9bc10c26c6_b.jpg
 
The colours are just great, aren't they? This is why I do not understand, at all, why people shoot digital. You have so many ways to get unique looks to your pics w/ film it is not even funny. I stopped shooting colour many years ago when Agfa died, but this stuff you are showing has real possibilities. Hopefully the QC issues are resolved.

Often this is related to batches. If it were me, I would try ordering several rolls from several people and see if I could find the good batch and buy a lot of it.
 
Steve M. said:
The colours are just great, aren't they? This is why I do not understand, at all, why people shoot digital. You have so many ways to get unique looks to your pics w/ film it is not even funny. I stopped shooting colour many years ago when Agfa died, but this stuff you are showing has real possibilities. Hopefully the QC issues are resolved.

Often this is related to batches. If it were me, I would try ordering several rolls from several people and see if I could find the good batch and buy a lot of it.
Click to expand...

I'm doing a wedding for a friend this Saturday - will be shooting 20% digital with my Fuji XE-1 - the rest will be Leica and Hasselblad. I bought some VSCO filters for Lightroom to make them look like Fuji film... Ha ha.
I use the filters to make the digital files look more natural and not plastic digital. It makes life easier for me.

Point is - people shoot digital and then filter the image to make it look like film. Just shoot the real thing!
 
jonmanjiro said:
The colours certainly pop like no other colour negative film I've used. Very slide film like. There does seem to be something of a QC issue though - see the horizontal lines in the sky in the last two shots below. I'm assuming its some kind of artifact related to removal of the remjet layer.
Click to expand...

My experience is that colors are more natural than Ektar 100. And I don't really see any slide film character in it. If processed in C-41 it gets even a hair more subdued (muddy). But of course, this is negative color film, you get what you want (or your scanning service thinks you want).

I still prefer Ektar, but this is nice film (I shoot original Vision3 50D with remjet still on):









 
littlefilmlab basically just process the film in c-41 and remove remjet or filter the chemicals.

I also shoot Vision3 50D instead of Cinestill, mostly because of price, but also due to the fact that the remjet do prevent glare and blooming in highlights.(that's the whole point of the remjet-layer, it's an anti-halation layer).

If you use film-stock Vision3, the cost per roll is extremely low.

I process mine in Tetenal c-41 and I remove the remjet after blix, I take the film off and use a soft wet tissue, before rolling the film back onto the spool, wash and then stabilize.

I find that this procedure leaves little to no trace of remjet on the emulsion, as opposed to using baking-soda and whatnot before developing (which doesn't remove all remjet anyway).

I filter the chemicals trough two coffee-filters before going back into the bottle.

I find it to be neutral and sort of Fuji reala'ish (not too saturated), but it's the scanning.....I have no idea how the film really looks, since it is a ECN-2 cinema-film after all.
 
znapper said:
I find that this procedure leaves little to no trace of remjet on the emulsion, as opposed to using baking-soda and whatnot before developing (which doesn't remove all remjet anyway).

I filter the chemicals trough two coffee-filters before going back into the bottle.
Click to expand...

Hmm... I did the same as you, but my developer got progressively darker (so even with filtering some remjet stayed in developer). If you also use Fuji cine film it's absolutely necessary to remove remjet before development because Fuji's remjet will fall off completely in the developer and you can't filter that out with regular coffee filters. My developer was black after just a couple of films.

Now I remove 99% of remjet prior development. It's 2 minutes work with stuff that costs 5 EUR and is good for many many rolls. Yes, there is still tiny amount of remjet present after fixing but it's sooo much easier and less messy when you only need to physically remove 1% of remjet vs. 99%.
 
znapper said:
littlefilmlab basically just process the film in c-41 and remove remjet or filter the chemicals.

I also shoot Vision3 50D instead of Cinestill, mostly because of price, but also due to the fact that the remjet do prevent glare and blooming in highlights.(that's the whole point of the remjet-layer, it's an anti-halation layer).

If you use film-stock Vision3, the cost per roll is extremely low.

I process mine in Tetenal c-41 and I remove the remjet after blix, I take the film off and use a soft wet tissue, before rolling the film back onto the spool, wash and then stabilize.

I find that this procedure leaves little to no trace of remjet on the emulsion, as opposed to using baking-soda and whatnot before developing (which doesn't remove all remjet anyway).

I filter the chemicals trough two coffee-filters before going back into the bottle.

I find it to be neutral and sort of Fuji reala'ish (not too saturated), but it's the scanning.....I have no idea how the film really looks, since it is a ECN-2 cinema-film after all.
Click to expand...

So - your process keeps the highlight blooms and red halation controlled as intended? That is one thing that has kept me off this film - the red shift in the highlight outlines. Looks like an un-sharp lens was used.
 
teddy said:
So - your process keeps the highlight blooms and red halation controlled as intended? That is one thing that has kept me off this film - the red shift in the highlight outlines. Looks like an un-sharp lens was used.
Click to expand...

Yes. No stupid halos. Present in all Cinestill films but most annoying with Cinestill 800T which you would naturally use in situations where there will almost inevitably be some sources of light included in the scene.

Although, some say they like it. Go figure...
 
brbo said:
Yes. No stupid halos. Present in all Cinestill films but most annoying with Cinestill 800T which you would naturally use in situations where there will almost inevitably be some sources of light included in the scene.

Although, some say they like it. Go figure...
Click to expand...

Everyone to their own likes of course - but I don't see the point in owning top Leica or Zeiss lenses or anything decent when I see the the red chromatic aberration like effect from Cinestill on my pictures. Each to their own. Great process you have there by the way. Will try to do just the same when my little kids grow up a little more.
 
brbo said:
Hmm... I did the same as you, but my developer got progressively darker (so even with filtering some remjet stayed in developer). If you also use Fuji cine film it's absolutely necessary to remove remjet before development because Fuji's remjet will fall off completely in the developer and you can't filter that out with regular coffee filters. My developer was black after just a couple of films.

Now I remove 99% of remjet prior development. It's 2 minutes work with stuff that costs 5 EUR and is good for many many rolls. Yes, there is still tiny amount of remjet present after fixing but it's sooo much easier and less messy when you only need to physically remove 1% of remjet vs. 99%.
Click to expand...

We are wearing off-topic now, but do you use baking-soda, wash at around 40-42 degrees until remjet is gone, before developing?

I did that with a couple of rolls, but on my second roll, my photos had loads of remjet stuck in the emulsion afterwards, the first wash one do with the baking-soda, really slush the whole film around in the soda/remjet-soup, so the emulsion-side does get a really good dip and dunk in the stuff.

As I found it a bit hard to clean up after the fact, I decided to try another approach and it seems to work pretty well.
- I do the cleaning in the shower, and the floor there gets all black when doing it.

Indeed, the Fuji's seem to get 100% clean after a baking-soda wash, the Vision3's do retain a slight veil of remjet that needs to be cleaned before drying.

I haven't noticed much in my own developer regarding the polution (although I see that the double-coffee filter gets pretty black and it seems to be only during the development phase, the blix seems clean).

I usually mix 1L batches of color-chems, so I tend to change it out quite often, and Vision3 isn't my main films, so I only run 3-4 rolls trough per mix. (I am sure the coffee-filters doesn't clean everything, the remjet is carbon after all :) ).

I do appreciate that Cinestill provide the film, but for me at least, after trying out cine 800 and 50D, I found that Vision3 was better and cheaper. (I think I have 100 meters or so of each).
 
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