Lucky Colour C400 - 35mm Colour Negative Film

A genuinely new ISO 400 colour emulsion, from a factory that stopped making colour in 2012 and then rebuilt the line from nothing.

The second film out of that rebuild, and the one that answers the obvious complaint about the first.

Lucky Colour C400 35mm Film is an ISO 400 daylight balanced colour negative film and the second modern colour emulsion from Lucky Film in China. Strong saturation, warm rendering and visible grain, with colour separation that holds up well against other recent budget stocks. Standard C-41 process. DX coded, 36 exposures. No published datasheet.

What Makes Lucky Colour C400 Habit-Forming

Lucky's Second Colour Film

Lucky Film halted colour production in 2012 and spent more than a decade not making any. C200 arrived as the proof that the rebuilt line worked. C400 followed roughly six months later, which is a startlingly short development cycle for a colour emulsion and explains a few of the rough edges below. New coating equipment, new chemistry, new recipe. Not a respool of somebody else's film.

A Full Stop Over C200

The practical reason this film exists. Two hundred speed is lovely until the sun goes behind a cloud, which in this country is most of the time. ISO 400 buys you overcast afternoons, interiors and shutter speeds fast enough to stop something moving. Reviewers testing pre-release rolls found the grain manageable even on dull days, which is not a given at this speed and price.

Colour: Strong, Warm, and Not Universally Agreed On

Worth being straight about, because published opinion differs. The distributor and most early testers describe bold saturation with warm tones and punchy reds, and one direct comparison found stronger colour accuracy than the Phoenix and Wolfen stocks it competes with. At least one reviewer reports the opposite, calling it cooler and more neutral than Kodak with a faint green cast. Batch variation, scanning workflow, or both. Expect saturated, expect a colour cast you will want to correct, and do not expect Kodak neutrality.

Underexposure Is Where It Falls Apart

The most important caution on this page. The warm tint is straightforward to white balance away when the frame is properly exposed. Underexpose it and the images become considerably harder to grade, resisting the simple white balance and tint adjustments that would fix most other colour negatives. Err generous. This is not a film to shoot at a guess in failing light and sort out later.

Mixed Lighting Is the Other Weak Spot

Anyone who has fought with Pro Image under a mix of daylight and tungsten will recognise the behaviour. C400 does not reconcile competing colour temperatures gracefully, and interiors lit by windows and lamps together will need work in post. Single dominant light sources are where it performs.

The 400T on the Edge Markings

Rolls carry 400T along the edge, which does not mean tungsten. Testing has confirmed the film is daylight balanced despite the marking, so meter and filter it as an ordinary daylight stock. Lucky has not explained the notation, and it is possible later batches drop it.

Grain and Shadows

Grain has risen with the speed, as physics demands, and sits within normal range for a consumer 400 stock. It smooths in the highlights as exposure increases. Shadows are the weaker end: one reviewer working on scans reported stubborn blue noise in the shadow areas, and a separate report of reticulation on some rolls. Both are further reasons to expose generously and hand it to a lab that controls temperature properly.

Standard C-41, No Datasheet

Ordinary colour chemistry, no remjet, nothing a lab needs warning about. Lucky has not published a datasheet for either of its colour films, so there are no measured curves or latitude figures to compare against Kodak or Fuji. Everything known about how it behaves comes from people shooting it.

Lucky C400 or Kodak UltraMax 400?

UltraMax if you want predictability and clean skin tones with no correction work. C400 if you want stronger colour, better separation than the other recent budget 400 stocks, and a lower cost per roll. The direct comparison that has been published gives C400 the edge on colour vibrancy and UltraMax the edge on consistency, particularly in awkward light.

Can you push Lucky C400?

Probably not well, and nobody has published a reliable result. Because underexposed frames on this film are unusually difficult to colour correct, the usual reason for pushing runs straight into its main weakness. Until someone publishes tested push times, shoot it at box speed. If you need a 400 speed film you can push confidently, reach for a Kodak stock instead.

Best For Street and travel work, overcast days, portraits where warmth matters more than accuracy, and anyone who wants a saturated look without paying Portra prices. It rewards generous exposure and a single dominant light source, and punishes guesswork in the dark. Once you have shot it, send it our way. We develop, scan and print C-41 in house, and a film with a colour cast and a reputation for awkward shadows is exactly the sort that benefits from a scan done by someone paying attention.

Perfect for: Photographers who want 400 speed colour without the premium, people who would rather back a manufacturer still investing in new emulsions than one quietly discontinuing them, shooters who enjoy a film with opinions, anyone who likes having something to say when asked what they have loaded, and anyone whose dependency has reached the stage of buying films for their backstory.

Colour film from a factory that walked away from it in 2012 and came back more than a decade later with new equipment and no shortcuts available. C200 proved the line worked. C400 proves the first attempt was not a fluke, and the flaws it still carries are the kind that come from moving fast rather than from not knowing how. On the evidence of two emulsions in a year, the third should be worth waiting for. More Lucky film and colour negative film, posted from North Essex.