Here are a bit too many pictures of my first ever Cinestill 400D roll for my first ever trip to Malta.
I bought this roll a while back, maybe 6 months, from Analogue Labs ( where this roll was processed) for what seemed to a bit too much money ( about 18 GBP).
I waited for the correct opportunity and here I am going to sunny Malta for a family holiday.
The D in 400D stands for daylight, and the film is described as a fine grain color film with daylight balance. It has soft tones, natural saturation, warm skin tones. The film can be shot between 200 and 800 without push process and up to 3200 with push process.
I loaded the film in the faithful Leica M6 classic, fitted with the Summicron 50mm v5. ( some shots may have been taken with the 35 Asph v2 or the 38 Asph v1, but generally the 50 is attached to the M6 and the others to the M262)
I set the ISO dial of the camera to 400, not knowing what was best for my situation, the box speed seems to always be a safe bet.
The days were very sunny so a lot of the shots were done with high speed and smaller apertures. The colors remind of Kodak Portra ( warm tones) maybe and surely has a certain vintage look to them. Is this expected or not, I am not sure.
The film surely has very fine grain and shows a lot of details.
I also find the shots to have a lot of contrast, maybe just bit too much for my taste. But it is a very nice result I think. I an already looking to buy some more.
Oh and Malta in this story? Malta is a small country consisting in a few islands, the capital Valetta is where we stayed. If you are open minded there are plenty of things to do, mostly around history and architecture.
There are also plenty of outdoors activities.
Diving just outside the city walls is one of them.
The place is attracting quite a crowd of tourists, in this mid-term holidays the place was packed with French and Britons.
A couple of steep streets with stairs are hosting several bars and eateries.
Our first stop was Marsaxlokk with a famous Sunday fish market. You can access from Valetta by bus or Uber. From the ferry terminal in Valetta you can access the northern island of Gozo ( we missed because the schedule changed the day we planned to go) or you can take a 2 Euros ride across to the 3 cities.
Boats in the Three Cities marina.
Typical houses with their bow windows
Finally on the light picture, you can see a very special effect around the led lights. I think its called halation. Very common on the 800T film, but I was not aware that the 400D would also produce it. Anyway, this picture managed to go in Explore on flickr, so thank you Cinestill.
I hope you enjoyed the reading.
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