I have been testing Lomography Berlin Kino 400 in 120, with a control roll of Tri-X 400 alongside it to compare like for like. The headline finding: it is grainy, it is rough, and the negatives look bizarrely dark when they come off the reel. This last part genuinely worried me at first. I will tell you what I learned.
Then I will tell you the slightly humbling follow-up I have already discovered: the verdict I formed from these scans turned out to be incomplete. The same negatives produce dramatically better results when printed in the darkroom than they do when scanned. That is a separate article on printing versus scanning which is worth reading alongside this one if you want the full picture.
But first, the scan-based test, because that is what most people are looking at when they form opinions about a film.
The shoot
I worked with Bec, who modelled for the Lady Grey test as well, in the Bristol area on a fairly bright winter day. Brighter than I had wanted (I had been hoping for overcast for testing purposes), but you take the weather you get.
Three cameras:
- Bronica S2A with the 75mm lens, loaded with Lomography Berlin Kino 400
- Bronica ETRS with a 200mm lens, also loaded with Berlin Kino
- Rolleiflex SLX, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400 as the control
The 200mm on the ETRS gave me tight head-and-shoulders work. The 75mm on the S2A gave me environmental portraits and full-body frames. The Rolleiflex with Tri-X ran parallel to give me a directly comparable point of reference against a film I know well and trust.
We worked through a sequence of poses: Bec on a bench in afternoon light, sitting on steps, full-length frames with the longer lens, then an umbrella came out when the weather turned (special umbrella bought for the shoot, kept by the model after we wrapped). The 2.8 aperture on the longer lens gave me some lovely shallow depth-of-field portraits when the sun dropped behind clouds.
That was the easy part. Then I developed the rolls.
![PLACEHOLDER: Bec on the bench from the first session, showing the kind of environmental portrait the Berlin Kino produces]
The moment I thought I had ruined a roll
The Berlin Kino came off the reel looking like nothing I had ever seen.
The film base itself was dark. Not slightly tinted, not faintly grey: properly, deeply dark, more like a developed slide film with high density than a black-and-white negative. The Tri-X from the same session looked normal. The Berlin looked broken.
My first thought was incomplete fixing. I cut a chunk off the leader and put it back in a fresh strong solution of fixer, left it for ten minutes. No change. The base stayed dark. So it was not a fixing issue.
The next theory was that I had got something else wrong in the development. I had used Bellini Euro HC, which is a developer I have used reliably with other films. But there is always a chance of operator error.
So I ordered another roll. Dragged Bec back out (she was a good sport about this). Shot it. Developed it this time in Ilford Ilfosol 3, a developer I trust completely and use as my default for black and white work.
The negatives came off the reel looking exactly the same. Dark base, same character.
Conclusion: the dark film base is what Berlin Kino is supposed to look like. Not a fault, not a development error, just the film. Something to do with the Kino designation (cinema), which I will get to.
What the dark base does
A dark film base affects everything downstream.
When you scan or print, you have to compensate for that base density by giving the image more light to push through. That extra light translates into grain. Scanning the dark Berlin negative means cranking the scanner harder to recover usable shadow detail, which amplifies the grain inherent in the emulsion.
The result: lots of grain in the scans, lower contrast than you would expect, and a generally rough, almost gritty look.
Side by side with the Tri-X, the difference is striking. The Tri-X 400 scans cleanly with controlled grain. The Berlin Kino, same camera, same model, same session, same nominal ISO, has multiples of the visible grain and a softer rendering.
Now, the question becomes: is that a bad thing?
![PLACEHOLDER: Berlin Kino negative and Tri-X negative side by side, showing the dramatic difference in film base density]
The Kino question
Berlin Kino is named for cinema. Lomography’s positioning is that this film is intended to evoke the character of motion picture film stocks, which traditionally had darker bases (to reduce halation from light reflecting back through the film plane) and sometimes more pronounced grain (as a stylistic feature, not a fault).
I cannot say with confidence whether the Berlin Kino emulsion is repurposed cine stock or whether it just emulates the look. Lomography are generally cagey about exactly where their films come from, which is part of the cult around their products. But the dark base and the chunky grain both fit the cinema-film aesthetic, so I am inclined to take the naming at face value.
If that is what they were aiming for, they have succeeded. Berlin Kino looks like something. It does not look like a clean, neutral document of the scene in front of the lens. It looks like a film, in the cinematic sense.
What I actually think of the film
Here is where my opinion has evolved.
From the scans alone, my verdict was: rougher than I would normally want, character that suits specific subjects, not a film I would reach for as a default. The close-ups of Bec’s face look genuinely lovely with the grain. At the kind of intimate framing where you are not trying to record fine detail anyway, the texture works as part of the image. But the wider shots, where I wanted to see Bec clearly in her environment, the grain prevents that kind of sharp resolution. That bothered me.
From the printed results (covered in the follow-up darkroom piece), the same negatives became much more attractive. The grain that read as noise on screen reads as texture on paper. The contrast that I had judged as lacking, the darkroom paper restored.
So my verdict on Berlin Kino has shifted. From the scans, I would not have recommended it confidently. From the prints, I would. If you have a darkroom workflow, this film is more interesting than its scans suggest. If you are scanning only, you might find it frustrating.
This is itself an interesting finding about film testing in general. What looks rough on screen may look great in print, and vice versa. Most film reviews you read online are based on scans. The film community’s collective view of what films are good or bad is mediated by digital reproduction, which is not what the films were designed for.
The grain conversation
The whole experience has me thinking about grain more generally.
I have spent most of my film photography days trying to avoid grain where I can. Fast films pushed hard, dark scenes, that sort of thing. Grain is the cost you pay for the light you need.
But maybe I have been wrong about treating grain as cost rather than feature.
Look at the close-up portraits of Bec on Berlin Kino. The grain adds something. The texture in the image works with the texture of her skin and hair, the rendering has a depth that the cleaner Tri-X frames do not have. Side by side, the Tri-X frames look almost waxy by comparison. Too smooth. Too clean.
Modern digital photography has trained us to treat grain as bad, because digital noise (which is the closest digital analogue) usually is bad. Digital noise is multicoloured, ugly, distracting. Film grain is monochrome, organic, structural. They are not the same thing, even though both arise when you push the medium hard.
I am not yet convinced that I want to shoot Berlin Kino as a regular thing. But I am convinced that my reflexive grain-is-bad position needs revising. There are films and subjects where the grain is the point, and Berlin Kino is one of them.
What works and what does not
Works: tight close-ups of textured subjects (skin, hair, fabric), high-contrast scenes where the rough character adds drama, anything in soft light where the inherent low contrast is an asset, darkroom prints where the paper restores contrast that the scans flatten.
Does not work: scenes that need to record fine detail clearly, wider environmental shots where you want sharp resolution of the subject’s surroundings, subjects with smooth tonality that the grain disrupts, scenes that scan rather than print.
The film is doing one specific thing. If that thing is what you want, it does it well. If you want a general-purpose 400-speed black and white, Lady Grey is a much more sensible choice (or Tri-X, or HP5, or any of the dozen well-established 400-speed options).
The Tri-X comparison, briefly
Worth saying directly. The Tri-X 400 from the same shoot is exactly what I expect from Tri-X: clean, sharp, controlled grain, good tonal range, predictable. It is one of my favourite films and the results from this session reminded me why.
Putting Berlin Kino next to Tri-X is unfair to Berlin Kino. They are different films aiming at different effects. But the comparison was useful for understanding what Berlin Kino is and is not. Berlin Kino is a character film. Tri-X is a reliable workhorse. Both have a place.
Where to buy and try
Lomography Berlin Kino 400 in 120 is available directly from Lomography. Worth trying a roll yourself if anything in this review has piqued your interest, particularly if you have access to a darkroom.
Big thanks to Bec for sitting through two shoots when one would have been enough if I had not panicked about my development. Her PurplePort page is linked in the video description.
What is next
The follow-up printing vs scanning piece is the more interesting article and I would recommend reading it next if Berlin Kino has caught your interest. It is where the genuinely useful finding lives. This article is the setup, that one is the resolution.