Lomography Lady Grey 400 in 120 is not what I was expecting. I had been braced for the usual Lomography character: heavy contrast, prominent grain, the kind of stylised look that sells well to the lo-fi crowd. Lady Grey is none of those things.
It is a well-behaved, fine-grained, controlled black and white film. The grain is genuinely impressive for a 400-speed stock. The contrast sits in a normal range. The tonality is good. Side by side with a 125-speed film (Ilford FP4 Plus, my control), Lady Grey holds up far better than it has any right to.
I am genuinely impressed, and I would happily recommend it to anyone looking for a versatile 400-speed black and white film. This was a real surprise.
This review is the original test. I have since taken the same negatives into the darkroom for printed comparison, which confirmed what the scans suggested: Lady Grey is a clean, reliable film that prints as nicely as it scans. The follow-up article is also worth reading if you are weighing this film up.
The shoot
I worked with Rob in the Forest of Dean on a bright winter morning. Rob has a great look (textured beard, well-worn clothes) and he does not mind being photographed at length, which makes him invaluable for film tests.
I took three cameras:
- Bronica S2A loaded with Lomography Lady Grey 400
- Bronica ETRS also loaded with Lady Grey
- Rolleiflex SLX loaded with Ilford FP4 Plus as the control
The S2A and ETRS each got the Lady Grey treatment with various lenses (80mm and 50mm on the S2A, 40mm and 80mm with doubler on the ETRS). The Rolleiflex SLX with FP4 ran parallel, shooting some of the same compositions, to give me a direct point of comparison.
I am not comparing 400 and 125 films expecting them to perform identically. The point of the control is to see how the films behave relative to each other in the same scene, with the same light, on the same morning. If Lady Grey at 400 produces frames that look comparable to FP4 at 125, that is a real finding.
We worked through several scenes: Rob standing in a half-dug ditch with vertical timber uprights, a couple of frames at an open-sided barn using the dark interior as a natural background, then some closer portrait work as the morning sun came through low.
![PLACEHOLDER: Rob in the half-built ditch with the timber uprights, showing the Lady Grey rendering in winter sun]
Development
All three rolls developed in Bellini Euro HC, which is broadly equivalent to Kodak HC-110. I chose this deliberately as a middle-of-the-road developer. I did not want a staining developer or anything that would mask the grain structure, because the grain is precisely what I was trying to assess.
The Lomography films developed cleanly. The negatives look great off the reel: good density, well-controlled highlights, no fixing issues, no surprises.
One quirk worth flagging: Lady Grey is bendy. The film base has a real tendency to curl up end-to-end (not sideways, fortunately, which is the worse of the two). I dried the negatives upright with weights clipped to the ends, and even after two days they sprang back into a roll as soon as the weights came off. You will need to pin these negatives down when you scan them. You should be pinning negatives down anyway for consistent scanning, but Lady Grey demands it more than most.
The contrast straight out of the camera is good. The negatives look properly punchy without being aggressive about it. Tonal range is wide enough that you can see detail in both shadows and highlights, which is what you want from a 400-speed film for general purpose work.
The look in scans
Before I get into the grain comparison, a baseline observation: I do not adjust scans in Lightroom. The frames in this review are scanned and presented exactly as they came out, with no contrast or tone adjustments. What you see is what the film actually does.
Lady Grey scans slightly more contrasty than FP4 in the same light. This is mildly surprising for a 400-speed film versus a 125-speed film: I would normally expect the slower film to handle highlights and shadows more easily. The contrast difference here is small, but it is there.
There is also more detail in the FP4 frames, which is no surprise: slower film, finer grain, higher resolving power. The fp4 frames have more shadow detail and a cleaner overall rendering. But the gap is much smaller than you would expect for nearly two stops of speed difference.
The grain comparison
I want to look at this properly because it is the most impressive thing about Lady Grey.
I scanned both films at full resolution on a 21-megapixel camera, then used a macro lens to zoom in further and rescan, giving me effectively a 1:1 grain-structure comparison.
Lady Grey is grainier than FP4. This is expected. Two stops of speed difference shows up, as it should.
But for a 400-speed film, the grain is remarkably restrained. It is fine, well-distributed, evenly structured, and adds texture without dominating the image. There is none of the chunky, distracting grain you sometimes see in cheaper 400-speed stocks (or in older Tri-X pushed hard).
In the context of medium format especially, the grain in Lady Grey is barely a concern. Because you are starting with a larger negative, the grain is proportionally less visible in any given enlargement. By the time you have printed a 12x16 or scanned for screen viewing, the grain in Lady Grey reads as gentle texture rather than as noise.
This is the genuine finding of the review. For a 400-speed film, Lady Grey has remarkably fine grain. Whatever Lomography are doing in the manufacturing, they are producing a 400-speed emulsion with grain structure that punches well above expectations.
![PLACEHOLDER: a close 1:1 grain comparison between Lady Grey at 400 and FP4 at 125, showing how surprisingly close the grain structures are]
Where does this film actually come from
There is a long-running discussion online about who actually manufactures Lomography’s films. Lomography do not have their own emulsion factory, so somebody else is making these for them, but Lomography is famously cagey about which manufacturer is involved.
I will not get into deep speculation, but I will share one observation. I pre-soak all my films before development. (You can argue about whether this is necessary until you are blue in the face. I do it. It is what I have always done.) When I pre-soaked the Lady Grey, the anti-halation layer that came off in the wash was bright green.
This is exactly the colour of the anti-halation layer on Foma films. Same shade, same intensity.
I do not think Lady Grey is simply repackaged Foma. I have shot a lot of Fomapan 400, and Lady Grey performs differently. The contrast curve is different, the grain structure is finer, the tonality is distinct. So Lomography are not just relabelling Foma 400.
But the bright green pre-wash residue strongly suggests Foma is involved in the manufacturing somehow. The most likely explanation: Lomography has its own emulsion formulations, and Foma coats them on their behalf. That would account for the shared anti-halation layer (which is part of the base, not the emulsion) while explaining the different photographic character.
That is speculation. If you want to dig deeper into where Lomography’s films come from, there is plenty of online discussion to explore. For my purposes, what matters is the result: I get good images from this film, and that is what counts.
Where it sits in the 400-speed black and white market
Compared to the other 400-speed black and white films I have used:
Versus Kodak Tri-X 400: Tri-X has more contrast and slightly more pronounced grain, with a more dramatic rendering. Lady Grey is more neutral and softer in tonality.
Versus Ilford HP5 Plus: HP5 is the obvious mainstream alternative. Lady Grey is slightly finer-grained in my experience but produces broadly comparable results. Real-world choice probably comes down to price and availability.
Versus Fomapan 400: Foma is grainier and harder to control. Lady Grey is the more refined film, despite the anti-halation evidence suggesting they share a manufacturing relationship.
Versus Kentmere 400: Kentmere is the budget Ilford-family option. Lady Grey holds its own, perhaps marginally finer-grained.
So Lady Grey sits in the middle of the well-respected 400-speed pack. It is not the cheapest. It is not the most characterful. But it is reliable, fine-grained, well-behaved, and produces images you will be happy with.
Verdict
A genuinely good film. I went in expecting Lomography character and got a clean, reliable, fine-grained 400-speed stock that holds up against established mainstream alternatives.
Buy it if you want a 400-speed black and white film with above-average grain control, you shoot medium format (where it really shines), or you want to try a Lomography film without the heavy stylised character their reputation suggests.
Skip it if you specifically want the high-contrast lo-fi Lomography look (which is what their Berlin Kino 400 is designed for, see that review), or you are price-sensitive and would rather use Kentmere 400 for similar results at lower cost.
For most film shooters, Lady Grey 400 is a sensible buy and a real pleasure to use. I was sceptical going in. I came out genuinely surprised.
Big thanks to Rob for modelling. His PurplePort page is linked in the video description.