ReflxLab BW 400

Reflx Lab BW 400 is repackaged Fomapan 400 in their own canister, DX-coded for cameras that need it. The base emulsion comes out of the Foma Bohemia plant in Hradec Kralove. Foma has been coating film there since the 1920s, and the current Fomapan 400 has been in production essentially unchanged since the mid-1990s.

The respooling matters for one reason: price. Buying Foma directly from European distributors is cheaper if you live in Europe. For shooters in China and across Asia, going through Reflx Lab is often the more economical path, and you get DX coding that the original Foma packaging skips. The film inside the canister is the same Foma 400 you would buy under the Czech label.

The character is what Fomapan 400 has always been. Grain is large and structured in a way that reads as old-school documentary. The true speed sits closer to ISO 200 than 400, so most experienced Foma shooters rate it at 250 or 200 and develop normally. Pushing to 800 in Microphen or Xtol works but the grain becomes the whole image. D-76 stock at 8:30, or 1:1 at 15 minutes, gives the cleanest mid-tones. HC-110 dilution B at 7 minutes pulls in the same direction.

Compared with HP5+ the latitude is narrower by roughly a stop on the underexposure side, and the highlight roll-off is less graceful. Compared with Kentmere 400 the look is grittier and the shadow detail is slightly better at box speed. Tri-X beats it on every technical metric but costs three times as much.

It comes in 35mm 36-exposure rolls. The same Fomapan 400 base is also sold by Foma in 120 and sheet sizes, but Reflx Lab only carries the 35mm version under their badge.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure stretches to about 90 seconds at the negative. For interior work where you are already metering long exposures at small apertures, the correction comes up routinely.