So…On with the actual topic in hand. I really enjoy shooting at night, I guess partly because living in Liverpool in the UK, I’m used to taking photographs in cloudy dull light. The summers feel short, so chasing that golden hour is like chasing a lottery win. At night however the darkness, punctuated only by shop windows, street lighting and car headlights means I can forget about chasing the light in a traditional way.
So what was it like shooting Cinestill at night? Well, it was amazing but not without its challenges.
The first was the difficulty in metering for a good exposure – To explain, I decided not to push the film at all, sticking with 800 speed on the box. Whilst this in itself wasn’t the issue, the real problem was actually seeing the meter in my Nikon FE in particularly dark areas. I think if I’d pushed a stop, I think I would’ve worked out that I could’ve took a few more risks and just gone for the shot knowing I would still at least be around 1/60 of a second without worrying to much about reading the meter.
Anyway this was only an issue in particular places which were pretty dark.
The second issue wasn’t with the shoot itself – You’ll notice in some of these shots that I ended up with what appears to be spots and fluid blotches on the pictures. Now I’m pretty sure this has happened at the processing stage in the lab I used. I haven’t yet been back to ask them about it, but I definitely will the next time I go. I tried to clean them up in post best I could, and I’m happy enough with the results. In some ways I feel it’s part and parcel of shooting with film full stop. Sometimes its perfect and sometimes not, it’s kind of why I love it weirdly!