FlicFilm Street Savvy 400: My Beautiful, Slightly-Problematic Fave

I know I love (almost) every film stock I try. But Street Savvy is special. Some of this post will sound like I’m trashing it, because I did find Street Savvy’s one apparent weakness, but please know that I adore the way this film renders colors and am more than happy to forgive it its trespasses.

I shot my first roll of it at the Garfield Park Conservatory. It was late January, and I dealt with my winter depression by shooting five rolls of film at the conservatory that day. Of the five, Street Savvy stood out to me in terms of saturation and overall brightness- not a single shot was underexposed, miraculous for me at the time.

I’d just gotten my 50mm f/1.4 lens and I was being absolutely insufferable about it.

Some of the shots really would’ve benefited from a slightly narrower aperture, but I love the quality of the greens.

My second roll came a few months later, in late spring. I shot part of it while getting lost in a cemetery on a bright sunny day, and the rest of it around golden hour by the Chicago River. I definitely meant to shoot it under a wider variety of conditions, but I lose my cool whenever I see waterbirds.

The sunny pictures were pretty overexposed.

If I shoot this under bright sun again, I’m definitely rating it at 800.

I had better success with the golden-ish hour photos.

The level of detail really is solid.

I was way too far away from those ducklings relative to my focal length. It’s kind of embarrassing that I even took those shots. But look, if you zoom in, you can still see the ducklings!

Let’s pretend I did this on purpose to test the limits of this film, and not because I was too stubborn to not photograph the fuzzy ducklings.

There were a couple shots I overexposed intentionally, to get a slower shutter speed on the water. Surely, I thought, color negative film can handle an extra stop or so of light.

Nope. It cannot. This is after I brought them down a bit in Darktable, mind you.

Even some of the photos I allegedly exposed correctly were lacking in highlight detail:

In hindsight, looking back on that first roll, there were a few shots with cooked highlights that I was too deep in the honeymoon period to notice at the time. They just weren’t as bad, since the lighting was softer.

That said…I just can’t be mad at you, Street Savvy.

Who needs dynamic range, anyway? I can live with a film stock being good at everything except highlight retention. If I can love Phoenix, I can love Street Savvy. And boy, do I love it.

I definitely want to try it for night photography sometime, and get some long exposures without nuclear-blasting everything in sight this time. I wonder what it looks like at 800? Pushing it, or even just straight up underexposing it a stop, might just be worth trying.