Film Review: CineStill 50D VS. 800T
A hands-on look at the two most bizarre yet gorgeously delicious film stocks: CineStill 50Daylight and 800Tungsten.
9MomentScore
When you compare CineStill 800T and CineStill 50D, you’ll notice they each have their own unique strengths that cater to different shooting styles. CineStill 800T, with its ISO 800 sensitivity, is a fantastic choice if you’re often shooting in low-light or nighttime settings. It’s tungsten-balanced, meaning it’s designed for indoor, artificial lighting. If you’re shooting in daylight, you might need a color correction filter, but the real magic of 800T lies in its grain and that unique halation effect. This effect creates a glowing halo around bright lights, adding a moody, cinematic touch to your photos. It’s perfect if you love capturing the atmosphere of a city at night or want to give your shots a film-like quality.
On the flip side, CineStill 50D is all about capturing the world in daylight. With its ISO 50 rating, it’s designed for bright, sunlit conditions or controlled studio lighting. It’s daylight-balanced, meaning your colors look natural and true to life. The ultra-fine grain of 50D gives you crisp, detailed images—ideal for those times when you want everything to look pin-sharp and vibrant. Unlike 800T, there’s no halation effect here, so your images stay clean and precise, making it perfect for landscapes, portraits, or any situation where detail really matters.
So, if you are drawn to the drama of low-light and indoor scenes and you love that cinematic glow, CineStill 800T is your go-to. But if you’re more into capturing the world's beauty in daylight, with sharp, vibrant colors, CineStill 50D is the film that will make your subjects pop.
Check out some of our creator's best sample images from the film stock across various landscapes and subject matters. Which one do you like more?
CineStill 50D
Type
Daylight-balanced color negative film
ISO
50
Color Temperature
Balanced for daylight (5500K)
Grain
Extremely fine grain, making it ideal for high-resolution work
Features
Best suited for bright daylight or controlled studio lighting.
Produces very clean, sharp images with vibrant colors and excellent detail.
Low sensitivity makes it less ideal for low-light situations without a tripod or additional lighting.
It is known for its natural, true-to-life color reproduction, especially in well-lit environments.
CineStill 800T
Type
Tungsten-balanced color negative film
ISO
800
Color Temperature
Balanced for tungsten (3200K) lighting
Grain
Fine grain, more noticeable than slower films due to the higher ISO
Features
Designed for low-light and night photography, especially in artificial lighting conditions.
Unique "halation" effect, where bright light sources create a glowing halo around it, which is often considered part of its charm.
Versatile in mixed lighting situations but might require color correction when shot in daylight without a filter.
Known for rendering moody and cinematic images with deep blues and subtle skin tones.
CineStill 50Daylight
Best For: Photographers needing a low-speed film that excels in bright daylight
conditions with incredibly fine grain for high-quality results.
Producing some of the film world's finest grain, it has an ISO 50/18° speed daylight balanced (5500K) motion picture emulsion. Prepped and rolled for clean, safe C-41 standard development as an ISO 50 film. It may also be processed in motion picture ECN-2 chemistry. CineStill is a standard daylight- and tungsten-balanced film stock that renders accurate, true-to-life colors when exposed, developed, and scanned correctly. If the oddly warm colors shine through broad daylit images, they’ll hold a chromatic vibe with high clarity and an edged sharpness.
High-Quality Metal Cassettes for Zero Light Leaks
Factory spooled into new high-quality DX-coded cassettes.
Fine Grain
Incredibly fine grain and the ability to shoot wide open in bright conditions.
Excellent Dynamic Range
Unrivaled highlight and shadow latitude.
CineStill 800Tungsten
Best For: Photographers wanting a more fun, film noir vibe to their images explicitly made for low-light tungsten situations.
Rated ISO 200-1000! It can be pushed to 3200! This 800-speed tungsten-balanced color-negative film is prepared from the same motion picture film stock used by top cinematographers worldwide. This film is designed for difficult low-light tungsten and may be used in many different lighting situations to achieve a variety of visionary scenes. CineStill 800T has quite the signature vibe, categorizing it as a better purchase than the Kodak Vision3 500T. Although the two products are intended for different purposes — Kodak Vision3 500T is made for motion picture, whereas CineStill 800T is made for stills; a comparison between the two should be squarely focused on a description of the different look each provides. A red glow may appear around overexposed point light sources without an anti-halation layer. It is not lens-specific but can be decreased with diffusion, such as with the CineBloom filters.
Be a Still Cinematographer
3200K Tungsten Balanced color negative motion picture film stock for use as still photography film.
Made for Difficult Light Tungsten Situations
And makes it look cool, too.
Go Crazy Bright
Acceptable for push processing up to 3200 ISO.
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