Lucky 200

Well, I'm sure that we all simultaneously carpet bombed our pants with s**t when we heard about the news of Kodak's semi-uncertain future. While their follow-up letter did give us a certain sense of respite, it was an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. What would the film photography community look like post-Kodak? There are companies out there trying to make color film, but obviously it's quite a long and exhaustive build process, and Kodak has a significant head start. At this point, it's kind of like trying to out-pizza the hut. It seems third-party photography scientists have definitely cracked the code on 200 speed color film. However, we got Opticolor 200, Phoenix 200, and now Lucky 200. I'm very excited for the day that they crack color 1600. Whatever, let's talk about Lucky 200, because I haven't really seen too much chatter about it online. Reflex Lab posts about it every now and then, and some months ago, I decided to lay down my classic Jason charm that always works 30% of the time. I begged Reflex Lab to let me get Lucky, and they were kind enough to send over a roll for me to review, making this video possible in the first place, as this film stock is as of yet unreleased. So, I grabbed my Leica, several lenses, my Lucky 200, some clothes, some extra clothes in case I eat beans, and my youthful sense of optimism. Just kidding, that ----'s long gone. The box for Lucky 200 is probably what you're most excited to hear about in this video. There isn't much information to gleam off of it with Google Translate other than it's daylight balance, 36 exposures, 200 ISO, and that it expires in 2027. But what does Lucky 200 look like? I grabbed my little piglet, who's always ready to abandon us for an interesting smelling dumpster, to find out. There's a, there's Taco Bell over there, and so he's been trying to get at it this whole time. Okay. Anyway, out of breath because I too wanted Taco Bell, I loaded up the M6 perfectly on the first try. Yeah, no. That's fun for us. This is a daylight balanced film, so **** it, let's do at least one thing by the book on this channel and shoot it in daylight. First impressions? Iffy. Not the film. Iffy on my ability to take good photos. Otherwise, yeah, Lucky 200 is sharp, contrasty, and not specifically oversaturated in any particular color either. It's got grain, but it's not out of control, and really only ever gets muddy in the shadows. These were all camera scanned and inverted with Negative Lab Pro on the soft profile. I will say, right off the bat, this stock wants to lean purple so goddamn badly. Emphasis on lean. A quick bit of white balance magic and it sits in, though sometimes as a result shadows can go pretty green, more than like, I don't know, trench foot. It can be a warm film stock overall too. Once it's straightened out, the color palette is slightly reminiscent to me of some old Fuji film stocks like C200. These shots are quite good, in my own opinion. Sure, yeah, it's hard to take a bad photo at this location, but if anyone could, I'm the man for the job. But yeah, I mean, look at that pop of color on this shot. It's pretty good. 200 ISO isn't what I'd call a low-light beast, but it's workable in most cases, especially if you have a lens that drops down to f1.2 indoors. And yes, that is a flex, because I have nothing else going for me at the moment. What seems to be a shining level of achievement for Lucky, because it's stamped onto the box like the legal drinking age of moonshine in Alabama, is that this stock's emulsion is comprised of 14 layers. Quite complicated, actually. A professional line film stock like Portra 160 has 16 layers, I believe. Not sure where those extra two layers come from, so it's officially a mystery. Like how no one actually knows what the layers of a beefy 5 layer burrito are. The base of this stock after development is pretty much what you'd expect as well. There really isn't too many surprises with this film overall, other than, you know, probably the biggest surprise of the decade. Where the actual f*** did this quality of film come from? I decided to step out of hiding to find out. If you've been following the Phoenix Project from Harmon, you know that constructing a stable color emulsion is very tricky. Making color-negative films supposedly requires over 110 raw materials to mix together into what I can only assume is a huge gurgling bat. Which is basically how Batman villains are created, so that should make things interesting. However, Lucky has, I guess, been in the game before. Though it's been some years. Back in the early 2000s, the parent company China Lucky Group produced 100, 200, and 400 ISO color variants with, I guess, some level of partnership with Kodak. A professional partnership. They weren't selling, you know, $40 socks. Eventually, I guess the low demand from that dumb digital camera craze in the 2000s caught up and they ceased operations on photographic film around 2012. If my primary source, fake-made-up-AI-bullshit.com is any citation to reference. In recent years, it seems they've been pumping out some black and white film in preparation for a more complex emulsion in color. Both Alex and Reformed Film Lab did great videos on those stocks if you'd like to learn more. But someone on the inside has been booting up the color machines and cooking again. I would assume it's based off their old formula for Lucky Color 200. Just with like, you know, an oil change, new brakes, new blinker fluid, new modern materials and technology. But honestly, I don't know. I wasn't in that room when they were doing all this crazy-ass ----, you know what I mean? And yeah, let's back up for a second. Eagle-eyed viewers who are actually watching this video and don't just have it on in the background while they **** around in Lightroom may have noticed that the key code info for this stock says Lucky 200T, but you can rest assured that doesn't mean it's tungsten balance, simply that it's a pre-production test roll. They're still finalizing some things with the emulsion and the production as a whole. My test roll definitely had some defects, like these blue spots in the occasional scratch or line or whatever. But it's not really anything that I don't see on the daily when I'm digitally dust-busting my film anyway. Because apparently I live in a horse stable and nothing will ever be clean. Anyway, out there watching Baxter's ancestors do their thing and wondering where, you know, evolution went so wrong for the boy. I shot some more dockside locale. Lucky 200 overall has good, friendly latitude. Here's a stress test, you know? Backlit out the ass. This image is a complete latitude nightmare for any film manufacturer. But Lucky 200 stays cool and calm in the cockpit and holds onto detail well, all things considered. There is some thin and I'd say basically unnoticeable halation in extreme situations like this. You literally can't avoid it on any film stock unless you're Ektachrome for some reason. But Lucky 200 clearly has some sort of anti-halation layer. Which only lends even more credence to the fact that this is a very advanced film stock built upon legacy knowledge within the company. And I couldn't be happier it's here. But where does this film stock fit in? The rumor mill is certainly abuzz about how much this film stock will cost at launch. Many people here in the US seem to think it'll be around $5, which is actually quite competitive. Especially compared to something like Kodak Gold, which is about $7 here in the US. We haven't really ever seen a discount like that. At least not since the $5 Subway Footlong. The sandwich, not male prostitution. If it does end up being that price, I can see a pretty big shift happening in the market for cheap drugstore film. And if Lucky really wanted to throw a live hand grenade into the trench, which I totally think they should. They'd sell this stuff in 100 foot and 400 foot bulk rolls to lessen the cost for the consumer even further. Something that Kodak is apparently too scared to keep doing because everything sucks and nothing is fun anymore. Otherwise, I don't know. What is there to say? Are we entering an era where more and more companies are going to start popping out of the woodwork and manufacturing color film? I'm not so sure. I really do think this was just more of a lucky occurrence. I haven't yet heard of a release date for Lucky 200, but they did say summer 2025. And well, it's about 200 degrees Celsius outside here in LA. So that means it's cooling down and summer's almost over. To be honest, if there's already official labeling and packaging for Lucky 200, they're probably like 99% done with it at this point. Half the rolls that I receive in advance from companies are just black unmarked canisters that I have to beg my lab to develop on the promise that it's not motion picture film. In case of emergency and color film drying up, I'm glad Lucky 200 is here. It's a solid entry into the color film arena and will probably likely only get better. If you can get your hands on it, I'd highly recommend trying it out because you can probably do better things with it than me. Or maybe you're just as sh** as me. In which case, let's hope that that Atlas comet heading towards Earth is actually an alien mothership here to blow us up and just finally be done with it.