CineStill 400D

CineStill 400D is not a Vision3 rebrand. That distinction matters because most people assume every CineStill product follows the 800T model: pull Kodak cinema stock, remove remjet, sell to still photographers. 400D breaks that pattern. The Wrights developed a new emulsion for this one and launched it through a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign on their own site in 2022, shipping their largest production run to date.

The daylight balance at ISO 400 puts it in direct competition with Kodak Ultramax and Fuji Superia in terms of shooting speed, but the rendering is different. 400D has a softer grain structure than either of those consumer stocks. It reads more cinematic in the sense that tonality transitions gradually rather than stepping. Color saturation is moderate. Blues and greens lean slightly cool without going clinical.

Halation is present but less aggressive than 800T. You will see some blooming around bright point sources in night shots, but it is subtle rather than the red explosion that made 800T famous. Photographers who want a hint of that character without it dominating the image find 400D more controllable.

At 400 ISO, the film handles indoor available light acceptably without flash. It does not push cleanly past 800. Some photographers rate it at 320 and develop normally for slightly denser negatives, which scans with a bit more latitude in the shadows.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.10, same as 50D. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. In practice, the gentle curve means a two-second indicated reading becomes roughly 2.2 seconds corrected, which is negligible for most purposes. Long night exposures past ten or fifteen seconds still benefit from the correction, though 400D is not a typical choice for very long work.

Availability has been inconsistent since launch due to demand outpacing production. Stock levels improve in late 2023 and into 2024 as manufacturing scales up.