Cinestill with Tuyet
One night, I got asked to hang out while my friend Vincent shot for a campaign he was working on. I decided to try out my roll of Cinestill 800 since I overheard there was going to be sparklers involved. I grabbed my M6 and headed out.
Tuyet is one of Vincent's friends and muses. You may recognize her from a lot of his photos and it's pretty easy to tell why: she's a stunner! She is definitely not shy in front of the camera which makes it even easier to photograph her. She has great style, gorgeous long hair, a killer smile, and a great personality. I was fortunate to be able to tag along and sneak in some behind-the-scenes film shots.
Cinestill has a very unique look to it and that's because it is motion picture cinema film that can be processed in C-41. The genius creators of this film stock made this film available to be shot on 35mm and soon to be 120 plus 4x5! They had a super successful campaign recently (one of which I backed, the 120, twice!) and I can't tell you how eager I am for August to come around to be able to finally shoot some more of this lovely film. The sun was setting fast but I knew I would be able to get some shots even if it got a bit dark because of how spectacular this film performs in lowlight situations however, I kind of messed up and rated this film at 200 when I really meant to only rate it at 400. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the results but definitely wasn't my original intention.
As soon as the light started to set, we whipped out our box of sparklers to create some fun July 4th themed portraits. I mean, who doesn't like sparklers? Even if you're not shooting, they are fun and addictive!
I can't help but wish these portraits came out a tad bit darker. You live and you learn right? The funniest part was when I first got to the lake, I thought my camera had film already in it since the counter was showing '15'. Little did I know I shot through maybe 21 frames and began to 'wind back my film' only to then realize that my camera was COMPLETELY EMPTY! What a noob move I tell ya. That WHOLE time I thought I was getting 'bangers' and what I was getting was a big ol' heaping spoon of NOTHING. I felt like such a dork but hey! At least I had the Cinestill with me to save my life. Otherwise, I would of been in really big trouble, well, maybe not trouble but definitely out of photos.
The Cinestill did perform a lot better in lower light. The shots above were shot right after the sun had set yet, I was still able to capture these fantastic shots of Tuyet. Overall, I was quite pleased with the turnout but, next time I will make sure to have film wound up in my camera before going trigger happy.
