Priming creativity with Skycast (2383)

Ethereal, moody, bold….blue. There are a lot of words to describe images composed on Captureel’s Skycast (2383). Captureel curates a collection of respooled cinema stocks including this choice - Kodak Vision3* Color Print Motion Picture film (2383) rolled into 36 exposure still film canisters. The special effects of this film are realized due to intentional misuse. The film is intended for motion picture equipment and chemical processes. When shot with standard still film equipment and processed with the ECN-2 process, the resulting images have a strong blue cast that can be used to creative advantage.

This film is slow. Shot at iso 3, the film is 7 stops slower than Portra 400. On a bright day with a fast lens and steady hand you might be able to shoot handheld, but nailing focus and depth of field will be a challenge. Get over it. Put your camera on a tripod and shoot away. You can even enjoy motion effects (moving water and action) in broad daylight with slow shutter speeds.

Use of a handheld meter is recommended. Many on-camera meter systems do not go as low as iso 3. In fact, many handheld meters do not go this low. You can set your camera meter as low as possible then do mental math in manual mode each time you take a shot for remaining stops not covered by your meter. With my Nikon FE I was able to fool the meter by setting film speed to 12 iso then use the exposure compensation dial to get the final 2 stops needed to reach iso 3. Even with this trick, the on-camera meter consistently underexposed images (to my eye). Thankfully I didn’t entirely rely on the camera metering and mostly measured with a handheld meter. 

 Most of my exposures were over 1 second. Part of my issue with in-camera metering may have been inaccuracies of center weighted metering along with the need to overexpose slightly to compensate for reciprocity failure that comes into play with many films when exposures exceed 1 second. Enough nerdery….

Using exposure compensation to stretch the iso range of my on-camera meter. Credit: Ryan Flatters

The real story with this film stock is the color cast. Blue, blue, blue! Captureel mentions that yellow and orange highlights can also be a feature, but I was not able to reproduce this effect. I intentionally shot pictures featuring yellow objects (a yellow house and a yellow ‘Harvard’ airplane). It might be that I needed stronger light. Unfortunately the week when I shot the film was overcast and rainy.