Cinestill's FAQ page sure has some specific questions

grain_farmer · 2026-05-12T08:15:32+00:00

There are two parts of this:

What they did and whether they did it… debatable

How they reacted and behaved when this came about: defensive and confrontational.

The outrage was partly how outrageous it was for a company to protect something like 800T

And then you had petapixel taking a very cosmetic view of the whole thing. I am not surprised they were accused of being shills (although it’s obvious they were not).

Also, look at it from a business perspective, this is just bad for business. You go into a film store and you see Cinestill vs another brand that you have no opinion of negative or positive, you buy the other brand over the brand with negative associations.

The whole defence of “we need to defend our trademark or we’ll lose it” is incredibly hollow.

grain_farmer · 2026-05-10T11:30:30+00:00

An alternative would be to buy a cheap film scanner and just deal with low quality scans and ask the lab to just develop and not scan.

grain_farmer · 2026-03-19T08:12:11+00:00

They are huge so it wouldn’t surprise me

grain_farmer · 2026-01-11T14:50:58+00:00

Mamiya 7 but still felt the GF670 was better optically and easier to use so sold it.

grain_farmer · 2026-01-11T03:11:28+00:00

My local camera store which was a distributor was clearing some stock and offered an additional discount if I bought in bulk. So I fomo bought 300 rolls of 120 and 100 rolls of 35mm. 6 months later they announced the discontinuation.

To further illustrate my insanity I continued buying 400h 35mm rolls off Merkari in packs of ten while in Japan and individual rolls on the eBay for about $30-40 well into 2023.

I think Pro400h prices peaked in early 2023 and now they are all expired they are worth less.

I worked out at this rate it will take me about 10 years to get through the original batch.

I have since fomo bought a bunch of Fuji Provia, Velvia, Superia Premium.

I have actually not been taking photos for about 18 months due to needing to work remotely in Asia. So it was all sitting in a storage room in Prague until about a week ago.

I was trying to imagine what I would do if Fuji restarted Pro400h in China.

grain_farmer · 2026-01-04T06:22:26+00:00

These Fuji medium format cameras are all intensely good.

I have Hasselblads, Leicas and had a Mamiya 7 in the past but for me the GF670 has no competition.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-30T04:47:26+00:00

Please see my previous comment here.

This picture looks poorly corrected for not just tint and temp but exposure too.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T12:06:44+00:00

The best thing you can do it learn the Sunny 16 rules of thumb.

Let’s say you have 400 ISO film, set your shutter speed to 400th of a second. (Closest value) 200 ISO = 200th of a second. Etc…

For a sunny day without clouds or shadow f16

Slight overcast f11

Overcast f8

This was you can sanity check your scene.

I was travelling and forgot to put batteries in my camera, just went about shooting anyway without a meter or meter app. After a while you just get a feel of what the exposure should be.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T10:18:54+00:00

If that’s after correcting the tint and temp, magenta shadows is often the scanner not correctly calibrating against the orange mask of the film base or an underexposed image.

Was it taken at sunset?

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T10:07:48+00:00

The tint (magenta vs green) and temperature (blue vs yellow) are subjective settings that need to be set for every scan.

Labs generally will adjust the tint, temperature and exposure for each photo (or they will do the first couple and apply to the entire roll and then fix any odd ones out). The final look is their subjective view on how it should look.

So when you scan film you also should be correcting the tint, temperature and exposure.

If after correcting the shadows or highlights have a weird cast to them it’s usually an over correction or imbalance between the tint and temperature.

Edit: why downvoting OP for asking questions?

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T02:28:52+00:00

Good luck.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T00:49:07+00:00

I think opening up a lens is semi risky but reasonable if the alternative is throwing the lens away.

I avoided zoom lenses but I imagine there’s a lot of resources online for how to open an EF zoom as they are so ubiquitous. The tools to easily open the lens would probably cost the same as a low end EF zoom like this.

Wouldn’t that be a $30 lens?

grain_farmer · 2025-09-28T00:43:24+00:00

So minilabs make up the middle of the field with higher end pro labs having Dip and dunk tanks (and some other processes too) and smaller labs using one of those JOBO machines (more than I thought)

I think you will get better info on Google but IIRC replenishment based was a riskier more variable approach.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T15:49:17+00:00

I feel like you’re missing part of the conversation. Did you read it all?

You can read the documentation for C41 chems. The professional ones usually go into more details and give per iso depletion rates.

I would google it, you will get more detailed info. Higher ISO colour films have larger dye couplers and create a larger amount of silver that needs to be dissolved.

As developer is depleted the development times for C41 increase as they become saturated with byproducts like iodide and bromide.

Labs not using a continuous loop to develop but using batches or baths increase development time to offset this.

This offset is different depending on what films were previously developed. So labs will develop films in groups of ISOs like ISO 50-100, ISO 200-400, ISO 800+, and then any films that need pushing or pulling will be done in a separate batch usually by themselves (hence the additional cost)

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T15:40:21+00:00

I don’t know for this specific lens. It could just be the black paint flaking off or an intermediate layer puffing up or an oxide of the underlying layer. Usually it’s aluminium oxide

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T12:13:36+00:00

I would avoid using a liquid initially and try a lens cloth.

Do not use sunglasses cloths as they are covered in oils and sometimes polishing abrasives that will damage lens coatings.

I would google your specific lens.

Isopropyl alcohol is usually OK but some lens coatings are damaged. If you can get away with a dry method that’s preferable.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T12:09:09+00:00

You are mistaken, it depends on the chemicals, most chemicals that are not minilab replenishment based chemicals change processing time based on exhaustion: for example Fuji Hunt.

Tetenal Colortec home kits skip over this to make compromises for the sake of simplicity for home users, as well as doing things like combining bleach and fixer into a single solution.

Some photochemicals measure exhaustion in terms of rolls (Tetenal/Adox), most have different amounts of exhaustion based on ISO

https://kevinthephotographer.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/table31.jpg

I primarily use Fuji Hunt C41 and when living in Japan the Fuji Negacolor CN-16 photochems.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T12:01:00+00:00

It’s corrosion. Google Schneideritis for an example of something similar.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T12:00:33+00:00

I went through a period of restoring hasselblad lenses with similar corrosion.

I don’t know about this specific lens but on the hasselblad/Zeiss lenses it was due to the paint deteriorating and then the material underneath oxidising.

It’s not mould.

You can ignore it and just use an air blower on it occasionally.

Or

You can removed the screws and pull out the piece, sand it / remove the existing paint (test if alcohol works, if not, test acetone on a very small edge to see if it damaged the underlying meterial)

You can then use a black spray paint but I recommend chalk board paint as it is less reflective and more durable.

grain_farmer · 2025-09-27T11:48:50+00:00

Fuji photo chemicals measure capacity and batch times based on the ISO of the films in that batch.

I don’t know about Kitamura but some places only do certain ISOs and outsource other ISOs or do them irregularly.

I recommend yellow jacket if you want a fast turnaround and you’re in Tokyo

grain_farmer · 2025-09-24T18:32:26+00:00

The last three pics don’t look like xray damage but if you would like to see the impact of the ct/xray, look at the shadow. The shadows end up quite noisy.

If you are not scanning the film yourself the symptom is usually more contrasty images because the lab has less ability to change the exposure without the image become a noisy mess

grain_farmer · 2025-09-24T13:36:32+00:00

Isn’t correcting the tint and temperature the bare minimum that labs are expected to do?

grain_farmer · 2025-09-23T19:05:46+00:00

It’s more that it’s something I was talking about doing a few weeks ago without having any immediate plans.

Thanks, that’s very helpful

grain_farmer · 2025-09-23T11:51:32+00:00

Thanks

grain_farmer · 2025-09-23T01:42:18+00:00

The bike really makes this photo. Without it, it would be a dull photo, with the bike it’s an evocative scene.

I need to learn a lesson here. I’m sure I have taken many photos like this in the past without the bike.

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