Chinese film producer China Lucky Film appears to be close to releasing a new colour negative film called Lucky C400.
While there has not yet been an official press statement from China Lucky Film, it is believed that it sent out test rolls of the new film before Chinese New Year to some Chinese customers who had already purchased Lucky Color 200, which was released last year.
Film photography blog Analog Café published a report in February on a four-minute-long video review of the new film which had appeared on the Chinese social platform Douyin, the country’s equivalent of TikTok.
With the help of Chinese photographer, historian and film merchant Mark Xiao, Kosmo Foto has been able to unearth more test images posted to Chinese platforms.
Some images have appeared on Chinese social app RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu). The image below, Xiao said, had been posted on the channel of an official China Lucky Film subsidiary, Tuohaijia.
It said: “Not a limited edition, not a gimmick. It is Lucky’s reformulated recipe on original technology, a new generation of C400 colour negative film.
“Colour performance: Realistic reproduction, not exaggerated.”
The picture was taken at ISO 400 on a Pentax LX and 50/1.7.
Another example was taken by a RedNote whose name translate as “Trying to be good”.
They said the film had a “warm tone with a reddish tint” and added: ‘Must say, Lucky’s red gene is really too powerful. The image had been taken on a Leica M2 and a Thypoch 35/2 lens.
A third image shows a night-time view of the famous Bund waterfront in Shanghai. The photographer, known as Yueyue Niao, who shot it on a Minolta Dynax 7. The shot shows deep reds from the city’s lights.
Other test shots taken on the film have also shown up on the photography forum Photrio, also via Douyin.
China Lucky Film initially made a strong of colour negative films in the 2000s after investment from Eastman Kodak, which built major film production lines as part of a multi-million-dollar, 20-year deal. After little less than a decade, the deal was cancelled and all of China Lucky Film’s emulsions – including its colour films – were discontinued.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
