I ordered a Tetenal Colortec C-41 kit that comes in the liquid version. Now let’s talk about the home development process.
For what I remember, most of them were shot between f/4 or f/5.6 and 1/15 or 1/30 of a second. So instead, I exposed for the highlights and then added 1 or 2 stops when possible just to make sure that the darker areas wouldn’t be completely black. You may have guessed it already but I used my Xpan and its loyal 45mm lens.Ībout the exposure, usually, you want to expose for the shadows when shooting colour film but here it was impossible, there was not enough light even at 3200 ISO. I wanted to travel light so my tripod stayed at home and this was the perfect excuse to push CineStill 800 to its limits.
These images were all shot at night when I was in Vienna for my birthday.
It performs best when shot under tungsten lights (city lights) but you can also get great results in daylight when using an 85B filter to adjust the light temperature.Īnother advantage of this film is that it can be pushed up to 3200 ISO and that’s what interest us today. This allows us (and labs) to develop it without ruining our chemicals. The Brothers Wright made this film usable in C-41 chemistry by removing a layer called “remjet”. Initially, this is a film used to record motion picture film and that’s where it takes its legendary cinematic look from. This is because, when shot at box speed, all C-41 films require the same developing time regardless of their ISO rating.īut that’s not an issue anymore and, like B&W film, you can develop colour film yourself too!īefore we get started, let me introduce our partner in crime: CineStill 800. On the other hand, pushing colour negative film is not as common as BW film, simply because it requires development times adjustments and most labs can’t handle these because their machines are 100% automatic.
Why Pushing Film?įor example, if you are shooting in low light or need a faster shutter speed to freeze an action shot this technique can be helpful.īlack & White film shooters are usually familiar with pushing film because most of them are processing themselves at home and can adjust the developing time at their convenience. This means that you underexpose your film, then compensate this lack of light by extending the developing time. If you don’t know what pushing film means, let me introduce this technique.īasically, you purposely shoot a roll of film at a higher ISO, than it’s intended, in order to gain extra stops of light.