Cinestill 800T is amazing. It’s actually Kodak 500T Vision3 film, but Cinestill figured out how to remove the remjet so that it can be processed in C-41 chemicals. Most of the prettiest motion films were shot on 500T, so the ability to capture stills on the same stock is incredible. Unlike most other readily available still film, 800T is tungsten balanced (3200K). This means it looks great at night (gas station photos anyone?), but if you shoot it in daylight you’ll have a blue tint to all of your images. More on that in a bit.

Box speed is 800, but 800T is very forgiving when it comes to exposure. You can meter anywhere from 200-1600 with great results. It also pushes well, so you’ll have no trouble shooting it at 3200. We actually prefer to push 800T a stop regardless of how it was metered for the increased contrast (all of the photos in this blog were pushed). Also Phantom Thread was shot at 640 on 500T and pushed a stop, so we’re going to copy PTA whenever possible.

Due to the fact that 800T is tungsten balanced, your images will have a blue tint when shooting in daylight. However, if you overexpose (between 200-400) you’ll cut through the red layer and get nice results regardless of daylight.

METERED AT 200 IN DAYLIGHT

When using 800T in studio, you’ll want to keep the tungsten balance in mind. Strobes are typically daylight balanced, so you’ll want to use a gel to correct for that. We recommend a full CTO, which is what we used below.

METERED AT 800 IN STUDIO

Cinestill 800T looks great with colored lights. Typically bright colors will trick a light meter (especially if they’re red), so we’d recommend underexposing a bit if you have direct colored lights. The photos below were metered at 800 as an example, but would have looked better if metered at 1600.

COLORED LIGHTS METERED AT 800

All photos were taken by Sam Street on a Leica M6 with a 50mm Summicron. Thanks to Minnie Morklithavong for modeling.