Lucky film

[ferny]

I was flicking through films on a site and saw a company called Lucky. I've never heard of them (no big surpises there) and the site says;

A budget priced film, with leanings towards Kodak new technology. The Lucky corporation is Chinese, and having a considerable chunk of the Asian market did a deal with Kodak in 2003 to share markets and technology. This has resulted in newly revised emulsions for their black and white films, which should prove not too far away from TMax.

Their recommended developer is D76, with a time of about 6.5 mins at 20 C. Users comments from the net often recommend rating at 80 ISO.

A bit more information available on www.luckyfilm.com

So, anyone heard of them?

 

[Jeff Canes]

I heard of them and seen their film for sale on line, that about all I know. I found it at J and C Photo in the US


http://www.jandcphotography.com/

 

[ferny]

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/ was where I saw it.

 

[KizaHood]

Damn! Once I had developed one of my films at one lab which advertised a free film to those who order at least 35 prints from one developped film. They gave me Konica film, but then I realised that that was just Konica cover glued ove original Lucky film! Bastards! I've never gone to that lab again. I got rid of that film by giving it to one my friend with compact camera (every film is good enough for compact camera).

Hmmm, I've stopped going to ANY lab advertising free films - once I've got 100 spd film inside a cassete labeled with 200 spd tag!

Well, as one our local politician once said: "The only free cheese is located inside mousetrap".

Bottomline: DON'T use Lucky film. It's Chinese, remember?

 

[ferny]

Bottomline: DON'T use Lucky film. It's Chinese, remember?

What's wrong with it being Chinese?

"A budget priced film, with leanings towards Kodak new technology." was what made me notice it. Nothing wrong with VERY cheap b&w film. Comes in handy when testing camera's etc.

When a company has said they'll give me a free film it's normally been an "in house" film. Made or at least with the same label as the lab. It's always been horrible but it's free... Again, good for testing camera's and other times when you don't want to waste money.

 

[KizaHood]

I get your point, but...

Once I used fake film to test one my new camera, and the result was that the film stucked after 23 shots (it was 36exp film). I thought someting went wrong with the camera, but fortunatelly lab owner cleared the problem to me: that film was manufactured by cutting 1000 meters roll of film and packing'em into cassetes in some private manufacture. That long roll has marks where film is to be cut for fitting 36exp, but manufacturers just didn't follow that rule, so one of these marks remained on packed film just after 23rd frame. Then my new camera recognized that mark as "end of film", and just sopped working, "demanding" from me to rewind the film back into cassette.

So, fake films may be good for testing OLD-type cameras only, not modern ones!

Still, it's better idea to use decent film for testing, to avoid situations where some film failures may indicate camera failures. Not to mention danger of damaging sensitive high-end expensive cameras!!!

 

[ferny]

Sounds like the place you got it from conned you. I've never heard or had anything like that happen to me.
I'd rather use cheap film when I may not even get a picture than expensive stuff. When you get a new camera you want to check for light leaks, focusing and other things. If the camera or lens has a fault you don't want the expensive film to be wasted.

 

[KizaHood]

You're partially right. Normally I use $5 films; but after I experienced above mentioned, I'll NEVER again use $1 film in order to test the camera; I'll rather use $2 (still cheap compared to $5) film that wil REALLY help me while performning camera tests!