Konica Color VX 400

VX 400 was the fast end of Konica's mid-1990s color lineup. Like the rest of the VX family, it ran from roughly 1995 through 1999, when Konica rebranded the line as Centuria. The 400 speed got the most use of any film in the family because that is what consumers shooting kids, holidays, and indoor flash loaded into their point-and-shoots through that decade.

The color rendering carries the Konica fingerprint: muted greens, slightly cool skin, restrained saturation overall. Compared with Fuji Superia 400 of the same period, VX 400 looks softer and less aggressive. Compared with Kodak Gold 400, it looks cooler and less warm-yellow. Reviewers at the time noted that Konica prints did not jump out of the photo lab rack the way Fuji prints did, a virtue or flaw depending on what you wanted.

Grain at ISO 400 is well controlled for the speed and era. Not as tight as Portra 400NC from the same period, but cleaner than Kodak Gold 400 and close to Superia 400 in structure. A stop and a half of overexposure prints acceptably; half a stop under starts losing shadow color.

Working photographers in Asian and European markets often loaded VX 400 in newspaper photo bags because it was cheap and the color was reliable enough for editorial newsprint. Not a fine-art film, but for daily reportage and family snapshots it was a workhorse. The main weakness was flat bright daylight: contrast read low and skies sometimes came back without the punch a Superia would give.

Any sealed VX 400 today is at least twenty years old. Expired stock shows strong grain and shadow noise after a decade of warm storage; freezer-kept rolls hold up better but still drift magenta. Available only in 35mm. Process in C-41. Rate found stock at 200.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 5-second meter reading runs to about 7 seconds at the negative; a 30-second exposure climbs to roughly a minute. For indoor available-light at narrow apertures, expect to cross that threshold regularly.