ReflxLab Aerocolor 100

The film inside the ReflxLab Aerocolor 100 cassette is Kodak Aerocolor IV 2460, the same emulsion that Kodak still spools in 9.5-inch wide rolls for aerial mapping work. ReflxLab is one of several small operations (SantaColor and FlicFilm Elektra 100 being the other obvious ones) cutting the 2460 stock down to 35mm and selling it as a consumer film. The base stock is identical across all three brands.

What you get is a color negative film with no orange mask. Kodak omitted the mask from the original aerial design because reconnaissance technicians wanted to read the negative directly without color correction; the side effect for still photographers is that scanning is straightforward. Set white balance from the clear base, invert, and the colors land more honestly than on Portra or Ektar where the orange mask requires interpretation.

The dynamic range is the other inheritance from aerial work. Kodak publishes around 10.5 stops, which is broader than most consumer color negative stocks. In practice you can rate it at 80 in bright sun, expose for the shadows, and the highlights hold cleanly. Compared to Ektar 100 the saturation is slightly lower and the contrast a touch flatter. Compared to Portra 160 it reads sharper but less warm in skin tones.

C-41 processing, no remjet to strip. Any lab can run it. Available in 35mm and 120 from ReflxLab, with sheet film up to 8x10 also listed. Grain at ISO 100 is genuinely tight, finer than what you would see from any standard portrait or landscape color negative at this speed.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second, so a 30-second metered exposure becomes around 35 seconds at the negative. The film was engineered for aerial shutter speeds that are nowhere near reciprocity territory, so very long exposure behavior is not deeply documented. Bracket past a minute if you can.