CineStill 400D (120)

CineStill 400D in 120 reached photographers in late 2022 after a self-hosted crowdfunding push on CineStill's own site that pulled in over $830,000 from eleven thousand backers, and dragged the brothers Wright through a year of supply-chain trouble before the rolls shipped. It is the first 120 color negative film CineStill has put out as a daylight-balanced stock. At ISO 400 it sits in a format slot nobody else really fills. Portra 400 is the obvious peer.

The emulsion is built on Kodak Vision3 250D cinema stock, rated up to 400 with no remjet and a halation profile that is gentler than 800T but still visible. Point light sources bloom a soft red-orange. Reflective chrome and bright glass pick up a warm aura that reads as cinematic if you are after it and as a flaw if you are not. In flat overcast, the halation disappears and the film behaves like a clean Vision3 portrait stock.

Grain in 120 is exceptionally tight. On a 6x6 frame from a Hasselblad or a Mamiya 7, the texture is finer than what Portra 400 gives at the same magnification, which is part of why wedding shooters who want cinematic flare without the resolution penalty have picked it up. Skin tones lean warm and slightly peach, easier to overcook in scanning than Portra. Ask the lab for a flat scan and balance at home.

Latitude is the headline. CineStill publishes a usable range from EI 200 to EI 800 with normal C-41, and the film pushes cleanly to 1600 or even 3200 with grain bloom rather than tonal collapse. Most photographers rate it at 200 for daylight and let the highlights handle themselves. Process in standard C-41 at any lab. The remjet is already gone, so no special handling.

Available in 120 single rolls and five-packs, alongside 35mm and 4x5 sheets. No 220.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 10-second metered exposure becomes about 13 seconds at the negative. For night portraits on a tripod where the halation bloom is the whole point, the correction is small enough that the bigger question is whether your subject can hold still.