Lucky Color Film "First Look"

[Minolta93]

I'm sharing this in case anyone is interested. It looks like Chinese manufacturer Lucky is finally releasing some test photos of the new C-41 film they had made an announcement about some time ago. I remember them talking about a price point of $5.60 before, but the new article (https://petapixel.com/2025/06/20/the-first-look-at-china-luckys-new-color-35mm-film/) says it'll be more like $7.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was excited for something in the five dollar range. At seven, it's pretty much level with the 3-packs of rebranded Kodak film sold as Fujifilm 200 or 400, and I don't know if this film would be worth buying over those at essentially the same price. Based on the test photo, it looks okay, but not at the level of Kodak.

Still, I'll probably try some anyway once it comes out.

 

[xiaruan]

I found some samples of size 120 and 4*5 on Chinese social media platforms. Here is a brief update.

 

[Minolta93]

I had no idea they were doing this in additional formats. Do you have any scans showing what the negatives will look like after being inverted?

 

[Disconnekt]

The bump in price may be due to the constant flipfloping tarrifs thats been happening the last couple months. Reflx Labs had mentioned a day or so ago that Lucky was planning to release it in mid-July.

 

[koraks]

At seven, it's pretty much level with the 3-packs of rebranded Kodak film sold as Fujifilm 200 or 400

Uhh, yeah, other than that there's no really affordable 4x5" offering and I understand that Lucky is actually offering that.

The bump in price may be due to the constant flipfloping tarrifs thats been happening the last couple months.

My guess is that the initially suggested price point was just a case of baseless optimism to begin with. It often goes that way; the R&D process for a product starts at 100% and then when all's said and done it ends up being 160%. As product development progresses, total cost always goes up - never down.

 

[halfaman]

I'm sharing this in case anyone is interested. It looks like Chinese manufacturer Lucky is finally releasing some test photos of the new C-41 film they had made an announcement about some time ago. I remember them talking about a price point of $5.60 before, but the new article (https://petapixel.com/2025/06/20/the-first-look-at-china-luckys-new-color-35mm-film/) says it'll be more like $7.

The prices are for China only. In another thread was mentioned that for the rest of the world it will be similar to Kodak Color Plus.

 

[koraks]

I found some samples of size 120 and 4*5 on Chinese social media platforms.

Thanks for sharing those with us! I played a little with the first two examples:

(Blue & green channels were clipped on the highlights in this one)

Of course, inversions from photos of negatives posted on social media are never going to be top-notch...but still, all this looks like a perfectly normal, mature color negative film to me.

 

[Agulliver]

Here in the UK, Nik & Trick have stated that it'll be priced similarly to Kodak Color Plus...that a *lot* of work has gone into producing this film and that's the lowest price possible.

Color Plus is usually my "go to" colour film but I'll consider giving this a try.