RETO’s Amber T800

     

If you might recall, back in 2023 there was a lot of online drama because Cinestill registered their 800T as a trademark (which is crazy, because Kodak had an earlier version of Eastman Vision II 800T). The fallout from that was that other companies that were reselling remjet-removed 500T simply renamed their films as T800. So there, Cinestill!  My opinion is that Cinestill was most likely angling to protect what they felt was their process, and in fact, nobody else was a challenge until China-based companies started their own remjet-removal and marketed their lines of Eastman Vision III cine films as C-41 compatible and challenged Cinestill’s monopoly.  

I picked up two rolls of RETO Amber T800 back in mid-April from Amazon because I had some Amazon Prime rewards points to spend.  I loaded one roll into my Minolta X7A, and finally finished the roll at the end of August.  I developed the roll in my ECN-2 kit from Ultrafine Online.

Amber T800 is the same film as the Cinestill 800T, that is Eastman Vision III 500T with the remjet removed. It’s been argued that by removing the remjet, the film “gains” more sensitivity, and should be shot at ISO 800.  It could just be that 500T has good latitude, so 2/3 of a stop increase is not a big deal.  In any case, I set my ISO to 800.  The one thing about the RETO film is that it is sold in a 27-exposure roll.  That makes it slightly less expensive than the Cinestill film, but it’s also fewer exposures.  I prefer 36 exposure rolls most of the time.  Also remember that because of the remjet removal, the film has problems with halation, and point light sources will be red-tinged.  Another caveat - this is a Tungsten-balanced film, made for artificial lighting.  If you shoot it in daylight, you ought to use an 85B color correction filter to avoid the bluish overcast of the images.  However, you can shoot it without a filter and fix the scans in post-processing.

I shot the T800 in a variety of situations, and overall, it performed as I expected. As you can see from the images that follow, there are instances of halation.  I did not encounter any remaining remjet on the film, so that was a plus.  All of the negatives were scanned on my Epson V700.

The photograph of the Nikon D80 in sunlight really shows how crazy that reddish-hued halation can be, as well as the interior shot at Highland Brewery and the white lights on the ceiling.  That's not really a look that I appreciate, which I is why I am not a Cinestill fan, or of the cine films without the remjet. I can develop my remjet-backed film in ECN-2 process just fine. Of course, not everyone can do that, so you'll have to decide if you like the look or not.

Now that Kodak has reformulated their cine stocks to be sold without any remjet, I look forward to seeing what will be available in the coming year. I still have 200 feet of Vision III 250D to use, and that is a gorgeous color film, processed in ECN-2.