ReflxLab 400D

ReflxLab 400D is respooled Kodak Vision3 5207 250D motion picture stock with the remjet anti-halation backing removed and box speed pushed by roughly two-thirds of a stop. ReflxLab is a Shenzhen-based rerolling outfit founded in 2021 that started shipping respooled cine stocks for still cameras in early 2022. The 400D is their daylight counterpart to the better-known 500T and 800T tungsten products.

The comparison most reviewers reach for is CineStill 400D, which starts from the same Vision3 base and also strips remjet for C-41. ReflxLab comes in cheaper, which is the main reason it has a following. The 400D reads cooler and higher-contrast than 250D would suggest, and halation around point light sources is more aggressive than on CineStill 400D, presumably because of differences in how the remjet is stripped at the factory.

Daylight balance at 5500K means it photographs cleanly outdoors without filtration. Skin tones lean neutral with a slight cool cast. Blues hold well, especially the deep daylight sky that Vision3 renders so cleanly. Reds bloom around highlights when point light sources are in frame. Headlights, neon, sunset hot spots all show the orange halo that gives the film its cinematic look. If that bloom bothers you, this is the wrong film.

Quirks worth budgeting for: light piping on the first few frames is common, presumably because the screw-top aluminum canister does not seal as light-tight as Kodak's plastic ones. Black hair-like marks occasionally show up in scans, which most reviewers attribute to remjet removal residue. Loading in subdued light helps. Nothing fixes the marks.

Available in 35mm only, in 36-exposure rolls. No 120 in this stock. Process in C-41 once the remjet is off.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 5-second meter reading becomes about 6 seconds at the negative; a 30-second exposure climbs to roughly 40 seconds. The Vision3 base is engineered for short cinema exposures, so the curve is conservative past a minute.