candido and colorplus

reflecting on my photos and technique

13 Aug 2024

Centrum Janki shopping mall branding advertisement, with a woman in round shades, a black hat and jacket, holding up a Smena 8m to her eye.

I’ve got my scans back from the lab yesterday (in impressively short time, once again). This time, I shot two rolls: Candido 400 on my Pentax MX and Kodak ColorPlus200 on the Smena 8m that I got back from repairs. I’ll share some of my thoughts and conclusions.

Candido 400 & Pentax MX

The film itself is basically CineStill by another name - Kodak Vision with the remjet already removed. It generates a lot of halations - giving highlights a further bright-red sheen. It’s also somewhat grainier than the “regular” Kodak films like Gold or Ultramax. Originally, I ordered the 800T version - more sensitive and color-balanced for “tungsten” (artificial) lighting. Sadly, the store had a clerical error and none of that film in stock - so I agreed to a replacement with the 400ISO film.

The photos turned out… interesting. I’ve got a couple bangers, but I’ve also got a lot of minor defects - stuff like streaking and random light leaks. Some of them add character! Sadly, one or two of these defects distract too much from the subject.

Photo of a pond reflecting the sun. It's heavy on halations, and a dark spot appears to the bottom left of them.

This photo in particular frustrates me - it would be a certified banger, but that dark spot right next to the sun’s reflection really manifested in the wrong place. It draws my eye away. There’s probably a way to shop it out, but I’m not THAT good at editing.

From what I read after reviewing the photos, CineStill-type films just… do that. They’re highly sensitive to weak light, which makes them catch even tiny light leaks with ease. There’s also no protection from static electricity, which could explain this and some other dark spots - it happens if you wind the film fast enough to gather and discharge the static.

There’s another photo that shows a bit of streaking, for which one I’m not actually sure if that’s the lab messing up a bit, or if it’s just the film doing that. On other photos, though, the light leaks… are actually kind of welcome? They add a lot of character to the shots and they really sell the fact that you’re shooting analog.

Lens

I’ve also had some thoughts about the two different lens I’m using - I have a borrowed Takumar 28-80mm and my own Pentax 40-80mm zoom (which is something like 55-80mm in practice because the lens is slightly defective). I think I like the 40-80 lens more, after all. The Takumar can do macro properly and is nice & sharp at wide angles, closer to the 28mm end - but zoomed in, it seems to struggle with sharp focus.

I should really just get the 40-80mm serviced. Once I can use all of its features, it’s gonna be perfect. It already takes very good photos, which is kinda why I’m reluctant to even hand it off into repairs… maybe when I pick up a prime lens to use in the meantime. I could use a prime lens, anyway, it makes for a much more compact camera.

ColorPlus 200 & Smena 8m

I got my Smena 8m back from repairs, loaded it up with ColorPlus 200 and gave it a good ol’ test run, taking a lot of janky photos… and a couple of real good ones!

Flowers on a windowsill, looking out into a small garden.

ColorPlus is just one of the mainstream Kodak offerings. Oddly, it’s not as popular or often mentioned as Kodak Gold, but I suppose decades of Gold being the standard, default, go-to pick did its work. It renders colors very nicely.

With this roll, though, my main project was to get a better handle on the camera itself, and a better handle on… myself, really. To make sure I meter everything properly and judge the focus distance correctly - and not forget to do any of those things before firing the shutter.

What I’ve learned from this is that I could still do better with range-finding. Some of my estimates were okay, sometimes it was just a matter of cranking focus to infinity since I’m shooting a landscape anyway… but I might just make like my friend and carry a tape measure with me. Hard data wins over vibes and “that should be about 2 meters, right?”.

Also, I should trust the Smena viewfinder more, and only adjust for parallax. I was never sure if the optics of the viewfinder accurately reflected Smena’s focal length, but looking at some of the shots… they mostly do. A lot of my shots suffer from bad composition because I’ve been over-correcting.

What next

I’m planning to pick up a small stack of Ultramax 400 next. This film stock might become my mainstay - among the various films I tried, it’s my favorite. 400 ISO really is a sweet spot for me - you can shoot it a fair bit into the late hours after sunset, you can sometimes even get an indoor shot, and it still handles bright daylight effortlessly.

One film I still want to try is the famous Portra series. It’s the pro’s film for good reason - and sure enough, also one of the most expensive films… I might save that for Japan.