Pushing Street Savvy 400: I Told You So

This will be a quick one. The first time I posted about Street Savvy 400, I speculated that pushing it a stop might be worth trying. I was right.

End of post.

Okay, I’ll yap a bit.

Yes, it’s grainier. Yes, it’s more contrasty. But I think Street Savvy had some wiggle room in both those areas to begin with. Some of these photos will still be underexposed, by the way, because in my hubris I left my f/1.4 lens at home because I wanted to use my zoom lens instead.

I shot the roll at the Chicago Field Museum, so most of the photos I’ll be sharing are of either dinosaur skeletons, or Pokemon statues from their Pokemon Fossil Museum exhibit.

The first and only other time I shot film at that museum was on Halloween the year prior. I was very new to film and made the mistake of bringing a roll of redscale. Redscale! In a dimly lit building! I’d show you the results if there was anything to show from that roll. Luckily, I also brought a roll of Reformed Night Shots (a Vision 3 500T respool). Those photos turned out okay, for the most part, but in hindsight I find them a little lackluster compared to the Street Savvy.

(Night Shots are on the left, Street Savvy on the right.)

The pushed Street Savvy was one of a handful of rolls I shot in the weeks prior to moving to the Pacific Northwest. It’s slightly annoying to have found a way that I like shooting these dinos immediately before ditching it, but I suppose they have museums out here too.

The shadows went very blue here. There’s no denying that. I probably could have edited this out, but I chose not to. I like that pushing Street Savvy made it behave like an entirely different film stock, and those blues paired nicely with the jewel tones of the more colorful exhibits.

Gone are the blasted highlights from my last roll, too, though the dim lighting might’ve had something to do with that.

The above is not a fair comparison by any means, but I can’t help but love how the film handled that chandelier.

You can definitely see that some of the highlights are on the precipice of blowout, but the ice is a lot less thin than it is at box speed.

I wonder if I could try pushing a roll of Kodak High Definition 400 a stop and seeing what kind of changes I get. Would the shadows go blue? Would the grain become unbearable?

I shot my last roll of HD at 100 with good results, so I suppose I’d be shooting it at 200. Pushing expired film is probably ill-advised, but I’m sure it’s been done. I’ll have to hit up Reddit and see what precedent I can find.

I also tried that multiple exposure technique I’ve been doing where I take a bunch of exposures of the same subject.

It came out pretty cool, though I think the technique still needs work.

Look. I know I’m a sap who falls in love with every film stock I find. I know I’ve had the same sentiment about Elektra 100, FPP Sun, Kentmere 200, you name it. But I really think this is the one. I swear, mom. This time it’s the real deal.