I was gifted a roll of Cinestill 800Tungsten 35mm film for letting a friend borrow some of my lighting equipment. After doing some research online, I learned that this film is great when used at night, and for taking photos of brightly lit signs and lights. I thought New York City’s Chinatown would be a great option to experiment. The film sat on my shelf for a few months. One early evening, I decided to go out and take photos of New York City’s Chinatown.

One of the nice features about this film stock is the ‘blooming’ or ‘halo’ effect around the highlights. If you look closely the lights have a reddish glow around it. This is due to a special technical process used during the manufacturing of the film. The fact that the native ISO is 800 makes it a great film stock to use at lower light levels. I personally love shooting video / photography at twilight, when the sky still has a little bit of blue left in it. Cinestill 800Tungsten is originally made from modified Kodak motion picture cinema film stock, which gives it a unique cinema-like quality.

Cinestill 800Tungsten 35mm film is slightly more expensive than most other film stocks, but the unique look it provides makes it totally worth it! Overall, it’s a pretty cool film stock.