The good news for cinema in 2022 keeps rolling in and we finally got to put our eager little fingers on some Cinestill 400D. In case you’ve been in a cave all year, Cinestill rocked the industry when they announced a new 400 speed color film for everyday photography after raising an unprecedented $830,000 from over 11,000 backers of Cinestill Film Maker’s successful crowdfunding campaign. Now that pre-orders have been filled, it has officially launched worldwide and is available to the general public.
The “D” in Cinestill 50D stands for day light this D is for Dynamic. What kind of results can you expect? You have questions, we have answers.
Technical specifications
To reiterate, Cinestill 400D is NOT a rem-jet repackaged motion picture film. This is indeed a new film that CineStill has been developing for years with its manufacturing partners around the world. According to their press release:
CineStill 400D is a fine grain film that offers a soft color palette with natural saturated colors and rich, warm skin tones. The film has a wide dynamic range, with a base sensitivity of ISO 400 but can be rated from 200 to 800. it can be pushed up to 3200. This makes the film very versatile, suitable for all lighting conditions, at any event, and can be used outdoors or in the studio.
FEATURES
- ISO 400 daylight balanced 35mm color negative film
- Safe for C-41 processing in photo labs or at home with the Cs41 kit
- Process resistant antistatic lubricating coating
- Factory wound 36 exposure DX-coded cassettes for 135 and 120 rolls of film
- Wide exposure latitude
- Can be processed by pushing up to 3 stops
- Halo can occur on sharp, overexposed highlights
Cinestill 400D in 135 sample images
The following images were taken at box speed on a Leica M6, auto-developed in Cinestill CS41 and scanned on a Plustek Opticfilm 8200i.
Cinestill 400D in 120 sample images
These shots were shot at box speed from a Rolleiflex SL66 and also self-developed with Cinestill CS41 and scanned on a Canoscan 9000f.
Final Thoughts
It was a little torture to wait 6 months before finally being able to get our hands on Cinestill 400Ds. But now that he’s here, I like it, I like it a lot. I dig the tones, from these early results I’d say it’s like Cinestill 800T and Agfa Optima Prestige had a steamy date and the resulting love child would be this one. It has the cool yet warm palette with a slight lean towards green in the shadows and the red halo genes of 800T with the punchy pastel wood and contrasting Optima DNA.
The D is for dynamic and that means 800D can be pushed 3 stops to 3200. Would also be interested in the lab results as these were self developed, they might shine even brighter. Stay tuned for updates to these results as we have more. Let us know about your experiences or if you’re excited to try it out in the comments below.
Cheers,
MN
