One of my favorite Film Simulation Recipes for after-dark photography is CineStill 800T, which is the most popular Eterna-based Recipe on Fuji X Weekly. While it’s great for nighttime, it’s not a good choice for daylight images, due to its strong blue cast. But CineStill 800T can be a good film for daylight photography, as long as you don’t mind a cool cast. I’m actually really drawn to this film in sunny situations, and I wanted a Recipe that could replicate it.

To reel it back a little, one film can produce a lot of different looks, depending on how it was shot, developed, scanned and/or printed, edited, and viewed. You can find a dozen examples of CineStill 800T that look divergent from each other, at least a little but sometimes a lot. There’s not a way to encapsulate all that into one Recipe. For example, you can find some images made using CineStill 800T film shot in daylight that look pretty similar to images made using the original CineStill 800T Recipe in similar light; however, a lot of them don’t. Part of it is that film behaves differently than digital, and some of it might be a certain filter the photographer used (such as an 81B or 85A), and some of it might be due to scanning or post-editing after the scan. So I found a group of CineStill 800T frames shot in sunny daylight that had a similar look, and I set out to replicate the aesthetic.

I’m extraordinarily happy with how this new CineStill 800T v2 Recipe came out. It really has the right feel for daylight photography. If you are looking for a Recipe with a bit of a cool cast, be sure to try this one out. It works really well for nighttime, too, but I actually like the “old” version better, which is probably more accurate to the film for after-dark images. Also, halation is glaringly missing. The Fujifilm X half has a halation filter; if Fujifilm ever added it as an effect that could be applied to Recipes on X-series cameras, that would help to complete the look. CineStill 800T v2 is compatible with the X-H2s, X-H2, X-T5, X-S20, X100VI, X-T50, X-M5, X-E5, X-T30 III, GFX100 II, GFX100S II, and GFX100RF cameras.

Film Simulation: Reala Ace
Dynamic Range: DR200
Grain Effect: Strong, Small
Color Chrome Effect: Off
Color Chrome FX Blue: Off
White Balance: 4500K, -1 Red & -3 Blue
Highlight: +2
Shadow: 0
Color: +4
Sharpness: -1
High ISO NR: -4
Clarity: -3
ISO: Auto, up to ISO 6400
Exposure Compensation: -1/3 to +1/3 (typically)

Example photographs, all camera-made JPEGs captured using this CineStill 800T v2 Fujifilm Recipe on my Fujifilm X-T5:

Comparison

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Fujifilm X-T5 in black:
Amazon, B&H, Moment, Nuzira
Fujifilm X-T5 in silver:
Amazon, B&H, Moment, Nuzira