The mix of color, light, and shape that adorns the shops and streets of Beverly Hills during the winter holidays is truly a sight to behold. The city does not compromise when it comes to its holiday decor. It comes alive with spectacular light installations, life-sized Christmas ornaments, and vibrant holiday displays in all of the boutique shop windows. In short, it was the perfect setting for CineStill 800T.
Blue has always been my favorite color, but not when it shows up in my 35mm film scans. The appearance of a dominant blue hue can wreak havoc on pictures. That said, I was curious to see what would result if I shot a roll of CineStill 800T in broad daylight with my Yashica T5. Given that CineStill 800T is a color-balanced tungsten negative film, and my Yashica T5 is a simple point-and-shoot camera that doesn’t accommodate filters of any kind, I had no idea what the pictures would end up looking like. Would the bright sunlight be too difficult to balance out properly? Would the pictures end up awash in blue and therefore be rendered worthless? There was only one way to find out.
One day in October, 2018, I stopped by my local camera store and saw the vibrant blue and yellow Ektachrome E100 35mm film boxes in the large film stock refrigerator. I was like a kid in a candy store, until I saw the handwritten sign that said “limit three rolls per customer.” That said, I purchased three rolls and took them on a weekend getaway to Santa Ynez, California, which is a small and picturesque town located about an hour north of Santa Barbara. I decided to use my Yashica T5 with my three rolls of new Kodachrome E100.
These days, I shoot digital photography most of the time, but I always bring one of my film cameras wherever I go, just in case I see something that warrants analog photography. While hanging out in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, I decided to shoot a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 with my Konica Tomato.
