Winter Reflections on Cinestill 800

Downtown Brighton

One of the most difficult parts of living in Michigan during winter is the lack of usable daylight. It makes for less creative inspiration and fewer opportunities to go out and shoot a roll of film. The good news? It forces me to try new things and use new film stocks to accommodate the few times I dig a little deeper to go out.

I have picked up a handful of Cinestill 800 ISO rolls, which is old cinema film respooled to use for still photos. The neat thing about this film is the ability to use it in low light. The glow around the lights it creates can be super cool if it doesn’t overtake the focus from the actual subject I’m trying to frame.

I loaded up my most trusty camera and lens, Nikon F3 and Nikkor 55mm f1.2 to really take full advantage of the low light. We went to downtown Brighton for Christmas lights and hit up a few neighborhoods for some of the over-the-top displays we knew about ahead of time. I think the results came out perfect for the situation, and honestly look even better than the real-life, real-time lights we saw.

I’ve held out on using this film for a long time, but I’m so happy with how well it handles that it will be going into a regular rotation. Even if I’m not shooting lights, I love the way it captures everything from buildings to people, and most importantly it’s readily available from every shop I’ve ever gone into…unlike some of the other films I’ve liked in the past.