Testing Cinestill 400D by the Black Sea

This summer I tested Cinestill 400D for the first time — not in a studio or under perfect light, but on the raw shoreline of Varna, Bulgaria. I wanted to see how this new stock would handle salt air, muted skies, and the shifting colors of the sea.

I considered retouching the cooler tones that 400D naturally brings into the shadows, but then decided against it. Film isn’t meant to be flawless — it’s meant to be real. The point of testing is to show the film exactly as it is, quirks included.

Salt air.
Muted skies.
The rhythm of waves against stone.

Elizabeth draped in white, lemons scattered on a towel, a stray cat cutting through the frame.
A rainbow barely visible on the horizon.
Moments that could never be staged.

Cinestill 400D renders it with a certain distance —
skin luminous, shadows cool,
like stills pulled from a forgotten reel.

Not Kodak’s warmth.
Not the polish of digital.
Something more fragile,
more cinematic.

I chose not to retouch.
The cooler tones stay.
The imperfections stay.
Because film is truest when it resists perfection.

A study in texture and atmosphere.
A meditation on summer,
seen through analogue eyes.

The Film Notes

Cinestill 400D surprised me in many ways:

• Skin tones: luminous, almost delicate in overcast light.

• Shadows: cooler than Kodak stocks, leaning into cyan.

• Highlights: clean, detailed, resistant to the harshness of mid-summer light.

I’m not sure it will replace my favorite Kodak stocks, but there is something cinematic about the way it renders atmosphere. It feels like stills from a film — imperfect, but alive.

On Imperfection

There’s a quiet honesty in leaving the images untouched. Grain, color shifts, small accidents — they are part of the story. What matters is not technical perfection, but the feeling the images carry: the sea breeze, the warmth of skin, the fleeting ease of late summer.

beautiful skin tones, not so beautiful shadows

cinestill 400d rendering in full sun

letting the camera lens shine Hasselblad H2 with 100mm lens

the ghost of august