Lucky 200 Looks Good in a HOLGA

I’m slowly catching up to what I wasn’t paying attention to in the past year or so.

New films, new cameras, new home processing kits.

This week, I got my first roll of Lucky 200 back from the lab!

And I love it.

Note: No AI has ever been or ever will be used by myself anywhere anytime for any purpose!

I purchased Lucky 200 film through Reflx Lab.

You’re probably sick of hearing this if you’ve been around here for a time, but they have the best prices and $5 flat shipping to the US (and generally worldwide I think?).

They also absorbed the insane tariffs and I will forever be shopping at companies like this that do things like that for their customers.

This roll was developed and scanned by CatLABS at the basic dev & scan level. I’ve never been dissapointed with a roll from CatLABS and have probably sent them nearing 100 rolls now. Or at least that’s what it feels like!

I’m not counting though because then I’ll realize how much I’ve spent.

These images are straight from the Dropbox file, no further editing. CatLABS uses Frontier scanners which I’ve found to be a bit more cool and contrasty than Nortisu results in the past.

Erm yeah though, never had a 120 roll with this film “first shot” burn on it. This was also the last shot I think…?? So, are the lucky rolls perhaps a teeny bit shorter?

I really like how it looks though so I’m not bothered. Something to look out for or test if that would bother you.

Red, yellow, green - all looks great to me. It’s a very vibrant and rich film.

These results have a ton of contrast. I wonder how scanning this at home would go…

Phoenix 200 didn’t look great on lab scanners like the Frontier (Noritsu did a bit better I think) even after Harman provided recommended settings. Then photographers who were home scanning (DSLR & neg lab pro conversion were most of what I saw being used) were getting amazing results!

So, perhaps when I get the negatives back, I’ll try scanning on the epson v600 to see if it comes out a bit less contrasty. Although it does say “high contrast” on the product description…and Lucky isn’t necessarily an “experimental” film.

My tomatillos!!! Which have been demolished by the slugs now (EW) (or whatever the gross little brown creatures were) but I managed to save quite a few and when the pimientos and jalepeños are ready, there will be salsa verde in the house!

I saw in Reflx Lab’s blog post here about Lucky that they are only making 10,000 rolls for the first run. Afterwards, they are planning to tweak and improve.

For a first run though? very happy, very impressed.

It seems to be a tendency of film photography companies to MASSIVELY underestimate the demand…Lucky now included:

“sold out in seconds”

Are companies disconnected from the market/audience or simply being conservative? Or do they underestimate how much we will spend on film? How thirsty film photographers are for new things??

I see a very near future (well it’s already here haha) where there’s even more demand with the increase in folks seeking digital detox and analog hobbies and lifestyle.

Have you tried this film yet? What did you think?

I have shot a few rolls of the 35mm version as well - one I’ve received back (a preview below) and I was absolutely blown away. I love it. Especially a bit underexposed.

This was developed and scanned at CatLABS also. I think the Noritsu scanners would have a warmer, less contrasty result (from past experience) so I’m curious to see if anyone has had their Lucky rolls scanned at a lab that uses these. Let me know!

Anyways, I’ll be sharing more of the 35mm results in a post coming soon!! Just waiting on a couple more rolls back. :)

At $10 a roll, this could very well become a regular film for me! Especially since the 400 ISO version is reportedly coming out this August (so when this is published).

There was a great video done by ‘Chris in Photography’ who was able to attend the launch event and grab a few rolls to test out:

As Chris mentions in the video, it’s great to have successful film manufacturers that are outside of the US (essentially not Kodak). I’m excited to see Lucky producing film again and will definitely be reaching for their film again in the future over Kodak.

As always, our spending is a vote for the future and what we want to see and I do not want to see Kodak being our only option for decent consumer grade color film.

~M