From film to digital and back: A photo blog

August 15, 2023

Ottawa, at Night, in Winter, on Cinestill 800T

No better time than in the middle of the dog days of summer to post some winter photographs.

The following photos were taken on my Hasselblad 500 C/M, using the standard Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 lens. This was a mini photo walk in Ottawa just after sunset in March 2023, with my friend Ross Johnson (a fine photographer whose website is here). Ross was shooting on his mirrorless camera, and captured some great images as we trudged through downtown Ottawa and into the Market.

I was shooting Cinestill 800 Tungsten (colour) film for the first time. As a tungsten film, it is colour-balanced for artificial light (3200 K), not daylight. Like other Cinestill films, this is a very interesting film, another re-spooled motion picture film. This is Kodak Vision 3 500T/5219, with the remjet removed and re-spooled.

Sidebar: Hang on, what does that mean, and is it important? So the remjet is a removable jet black layer, an anti-halation layer, a coating of carbon black particles in a water-soluble binder on the bottom of the motion picture film. Removing the remjet for use in a still camera, results in a halation effect. Halation is a visual effect that appears when shooting on a film as a red-orange halo near the contrasting boundaries of over-exposed areas, as well as a red glare in the mid-tones. Usually, halation is produced around bright light sources, examples in the images below, and it’s a visual effect that digital shooters sometimes try to replicate in Lightroom

Back to Cinestill 800T: It’s available in both 35mm (135) and 120 format. The Hasselblad, of course, is 120 format, but based on this experience, I want to get my hands on some 35mm for some Nikon or Voigtländer fun.

This film stock is the film of choice for director Quentin Tarrantino, used most recently in 35mm on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was also the film stock used by Christopher Nolan for the for low-light and night scenes in the movie Oppenheimer.

In early March, both Ross and I were in Ottawa, connecting at a meeting of Electricity Canada (my day job) on electricity grid security. In addition to being a fine photographer, Ross has an extensive background in security and intelligence, a distinguished military career, and is an author. I am proud to have been included in the acknowledgements in his 2013 book Antiterrorism and Threat Response: Planning and Implementation.

Ross and I wandered through downtown Ottawa along Slater Street, past Confederation Park, across the Mackenzie King bridge, to the ByWard market, and along Wellington Street to Parliament Hill, Ross snapping away on either his D850 or his Z50, I don’t recall which one he brought along, and me with the Hassy.

I was metering using my iPhone and the Pocket Light Meter app, and once again, these were developed and scanned by fine folks and Canadian Film Lab.

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From the Mackenzie King Bridge, looking west to downtown, a view of the department of Finance’s building named for Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister under PM Harper whose budgets created Tax Free Savings Accounts, and abolished the penny. First frame of 800T, and first example of the very cool halation effect:

Looking south from the bridge onto the Rideau Canal. While the canal is frozen, due to the mild winter, the ice was not thick enough for skating, so this was the first year the Skateway did not open for skating in its 52-year history. Again, cool halation effect around the streetlights and cars on Colonel By Drive:

The Shaw Centre, the convention centre connected to the Westin hotel and the Rideau Centre:

The ByWard Market:

Beavertails were not sold on the canal this year due to the closure, but the shop in the market does business year-round:

Street parking instead of market stalls at night, I really like the halation affect from the lights, looking North:

A popular spot for photos and selfies, the Ottawa sign on York Street in the market:

With the Centre Block of Parliament closed for restoration, the Senate has been moved to the old train station (the House of Commons is moved to the West Block, where they put a glass roof over the quadrangle). This is a much better use for this great architectural treasure than as a lightly used and mostly-ignored government conference centre, which was the its lot for the past several decades: