Film Friday - November 22nd, 2024. CatLABS X Film 100 Color

We hope you are all feline fine for today’s Film Friday review because here and meow we are going to dig into CatLABS’ X Film 100 color negative film! Alright, now that we have the requisite cat puns purrfectly taken care of let us turn our attention to the film at hand.

This color negative film was first rolled out in 120 format in June of 2023. It was quickly followed up with 35mm format. CatLABS has been a bit cagey about what this film is, but there is some very strong circumstantial evidence that it is Kodak Aerocolor IV (NOT to be confused with Aerochrome film, Kodak’s famed color infrared emulsion). While CatLABS has claimed their film is something unique to them, and while that could be technically true, this film nonetheless shares enough characteristics of Aerocolor IV that we researched both Aerocolor and CatLABS X Film Color 100 while preparing to write this review. What follows is based on both our personal experience as well as the assumption that this film will perform the same as Aerocolor IV.

CatLABS X Film Color 100 is an interesting color film with a distinct way of rendering colors different from (most) other color films currently on the market. Image made with a Pentax 67.

The TLDR on CatLABS X Film Color 100 is that it is a fine grain color film with a medium amount of contrast. In general it produces nice colors but has a unique rendering with certain colors that give it a subtly different flavor from the more popular color film options, like Portra. More on that below. It has a pretty great dynamic range to it, and also offers reasonably good latitude. Some users report loving to shoot this film at ISO 400 without compensating development at all. It is worth noting that as we move through our review of this film, all our experience thus far has been using it at its box speed of 100 and developing in the normal C-41 process.

CatLABS does not publish any data sheet that we could find on this film. But if you believe the speculation that it is Aerocolor IV, Kodak does offer a data sheet for review on that emulsion. Aerocolor IV is reported to have an RMS (a rating for film grain) of 8.5. This rating places it between Fuji Provia and Velvia 50 - RMS ratings of 8 and 9 respectively. While most Kodak films now rate grain in a different PGI scale, it is safe to assume that CatLABS is grainier than Kodak Ektar 100 but probably equal to or a bit finer than Portra 160. Technical jargon aside, the pictures that CatLABS Color 100 makes look smooth and clear, especially when shot in 120.

As an aside it is worth noting that Kodak Aerocolor IV’s data sheet shows its finest grain when shot at ISO 80 and developed for 3:15. The grainiess of the film climbs to a rating of 13 when developing time is extended to 4:15. So pushing this film, as with any other film, will noticeably increase the visibility of the film grain.

An image of CatLABS Color 100 shot in 35mm showing that even in this smaller format the film produces clean results.

Of course the film looks even better (in terms of visible grain) when shot in 120.

When it comes to contrast, CatLABS Color 100 is pretty middle of the pack. If anything, it seems on the slightly lower side of normal. Most users describe it as medium and we wouldn’t argue with this classification. It does a nice job working across the tonal range from shadows to highlights without tending to lose much at one end or the other. We have used the film at night with bright highlights and deep shadows, we have shot into the sun, we have shot it on overcast days and in sunny weather. In all our experience we have not had much trouble getting a decent range of contrast from CatLABS Color 100. It is definitely easier to pull highlights down than it is to pull shadows up. The latter do tend to get noisy and don’t hold as much information, but this is consistent with how most color negative films work: they do better with over-exposure than under-exposure.

It is worth noting that we read at least one review of Aerocolor IV noting that when processed with a time of 3:15 the film has a gamma of 0.63 which is actually slightly higher than Portra’s 0.60. As gamma is an indicator of contrast, this does mean that Aerocolor IV (and CatLABS by association) is a hair higher contrast than Portra, but just by a smidge. Like grain, this contrast does increase very dramatically when developing times are extended. If a time of 4:15 is used, Aerocolor IV’s gamma becomes 0.78 which would involve significantly more contrast. But again, this is consistent with other color films and how they behave when pushed. So we suppose this is less about how the film compares to others and more us noting that if you want more contrast in your CatLABS Color 100 images just extend its developing time.

This high contrast scene took a bit of work in post-processing to balance out the sky and the foreground a bit but the CatLABS Color 100 negative held plenty of exposure info to work with.

Despite the higher contrast nature of the scene, the resulting CatLABS image doesn’t seem terribly harsh. Also note the slight halation effect that CatLABS can produce with especially strong highlights.

We have risked burying the lead by waiting this far down to really get into what makes CatLABS Color 100 interesting, but we guess you can also look at it as your reward for being the diligent reader and not just skimming over the pictures.

CatLABS Color 100 has a different way of rendering its color palette. Some colors, such as blues and greens come across pretty normal. Blues are crisp and clean. Greens are not as saturated as some other films like Ektar 100 or Velvia 50 but they still have a nice “green” to them. Then there are reds. Red colors really jump with CatLABS Color 100, presenting much more vividly and with more saturation than the real life subject matter. Yellows are a different story. Yellows are just kind of weird. The best we can describe it is that yellow looks more brown, more like ochre, especially if you are photographing something golden. It isn’t that yellows are less saturated, they are actually less of a yellow and more of a different hue.

And then there are skin tones. This is one area where CatLABS Color 100 may prove a bit tricky. It does something with skin tone (Caucasian skin tone more specifically) that skews it just a bit. Again, it is hard to quite put a finger on it but we have had a tricky time getting portraits to quite look “normal” (we know, a completely subjective term). Skin tones tend to either look a bit peachy, or a bit blue. Perhaps this is a combination of the saturation that CatLABS does to red and the hue shift it does to yellow, both colors involved in Caucasian skin tones. But you can see our samples and decide for yourself if it is a look you like or not. We have seen a couple online reviews by film photographers who are quite fond of CatLABS Color 100’s handling of portraits.

Once again, if we assume that CatLABS Color 100 is actually Aerocolor IV or something closely related to it, there is some sense to this. Aerocolor IV was not designed for pictorial use, it was made for scientific and aerial surveillance purposes - to photograph subjects through layers of atmosphere. Whether the tweaks to its color palette are intended for some scientific purpose or because they lack the tweaks that standard pictorial color film has, CatLABS Color 100 has its own way of rendering colors. These differences won’t hit you in the face, but if you go looking for them, you will notice them.

Reds are especially vibrant on CatLABS Color 100. They show much more saturation than their real-life counterparts.

Granted, red neon lights are going to stand out on almost any color film, but once again they really saturate on CatLABS Color 100.

It is a bit hard to notice in this image but where the late afternoon light cuts across the grass meadow the golden yellow grass was rendered much browner verging toward ochre.

Portraiture can get kind of interesting with CatLABS Color 100. Depending on your lighting, skin tones can get a bit peachy or conversely a bit blueish.

Those are not the only interesting nuances to CatLABS Color 100’s color. It can also show a magenta-green crossover at certain times and in certain scenes. When we have encountered this it has been in higher contrast scenes, such as a snowy forest with bright white snow and the trees and dimmer, shadowed forest beneath. Or a coastal scene where grey cliffs sit under a brighter sky. In these cases the highlights get a pinkish magenta cast to them while the shadows hold onto a green cast. This can be tricky to color correct since eliminating one cast reinforces the other.

There is also CatLABS’ occasional tendency toward light halation. We have seen a bit of a rosy glow around very bright highlights, so this halation effect may also be influencing how colors in the brights render.

CatLABS Color 100 can sometimes show a magenta-green crossover like here where the highlights are pinkish but the shadows are greenish.

More care was taken to correct some of the magenta out of the highlights in this scene but they still have a touch while the shadows show a noticeable green cast.

Another scene where the highlights picked up a slight pinkish tint.

Despite its colorful quirks, CatLABS Color 100 seems to perform pretty well under artificial lighting. We shot part of a roll walking around Portland at night and the resulting negatives were easy to work with and we quite liked the look of them. This image and the above Sizzle Pie sign are both from that evening.

It really does seem like a great nighttime film.

We are coming up on the conclusion of this review and so it is time to sum up our thoughts and feelings on this film. When all is said and done, we really don’t care if CatLABS Color 100 is repackaged Aerocolor IV or not. That info is merely useful in helping do research on how to use the film and what to expect from it. Aerocolor IV is not normally readily available to us consumer photographers. So whether it shows up with a CatLABS label or a Santa Color label or a Flik Film label doesn’t terribly matter. What does matter is how the film performs once it is in our cameras. And in that sense we found ourselves generally impressed and pleasantly surprised by our results. The images we got back by and large looked really great. The splashes of saturated reds were a pleasant surprise. The slightly-off yellows and weird skin tones an intriguing mystery. It is really nice to have a film that is just a bit skewed in its colors - it gives us a different flavor to work with. The fact that CatLABS Color 100 is available in both 35mm and 120 just sweetens the deal even more.

There is still more we want to experiment with this film. We have only done a little bit of long exposure work with. We also want to try pushing its development both after re-rating its speed and at its native 100 ISO. But it is fun to have some questions left unanswered with this film stock. It is fun to know there are corners yet unexplored and projects yet to tackle.

But we have kept you long enough (thank you for your patience!). If getting this far has convinced you to try some CatLABS Color 100, you can hit this link to head right to it on our site!

Meanwhile, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter The Loupe to get Film Friday, and other deals, sent right to your email inbox! Thanks again for reading, now enjoy some final sample images!