5 Frames from Florence, on DragonFilm CI

For those who aren’t already familiar with them, DragonFilm is a small UK based company who re-spool various interesting films under their own branding. Up until recently they sold a few black and white films (no fancy names, just No. I, No II and so on, up to VI) but during the latter part of 2025 they released their first colour film – named simply CI.

I’d tried a couple of their existing black and white stocks already, and was impressed by both the packaging of the product (nice metal-feel screwtop canisters in simple but effectively designed boxes) and also their customer service (they sent me a free film for pointing out an error in the developing instructions on their website for one of the films).

With a winter weekend trip to Florence looming, I decided to purchase their new colour film to take with me.

I’d seen these photobooths pop up on Instagram, so had already added a few markers on Google Maps so I could hunt them out. They’re probably a bit of a cliche by now, but I never let that stop me. The first one I found had a huge queue of people waiting to use it (or, rather, waiting to take a photo of themselves in it / next to it on their phones). I did stumble across this one which was unusued though, and grabbed a couple of shots – preferring this version with the lady pausing to check her phone)

As for the film – their website describes it thus:
“DragonFilm NO.CI is our first colour film, with a timeless vintage appeal at ISO 100.  It’s ideal for bright days and creates a wonderfully warm and timeless vintage mood.  This film is very flexible and is capable of being pushed up to 800 ISO with only a small loss of colour and slightly more grain.  Shooting at 400 ISO renders beautifully, with little grain and accurate colours.”

For such a large building, the Duomo is surprisingly invisible when you’re walking around the city centre. The streets are narrow, with tall buildings on each side, so you need to hunt out streets like the above which lead towards it. The film handled the brightness between the sky and shadows well.

One notable difference from DragonFilms’ black and white offerings (well, asides from the obvious!) was that no mention was made of the source stock. For their black and white films, the website tells you to develop following the timings for <insert film name here> – so you know what you’re actually getting. But with the colour film, you’re just told to develop with the standard C41 process. I was no wiser once the negatives came back to me as the film has no markings on the edge whatsoever!

So, what did I think?

I found the film suited Florence well – the “vintage tones” matched up well with the old buildings and their warm-hued plaster, and other subjects such as the old car (below). In contrast to something like Harman Phoenix (natively somewhere below ISO 200) this film gave consistent results with no harsh grain, and a decent dynamic range. I usually scan my images myself, but these came from my lab as the courier seemed to be having trouble finding them to return the negatives back to me! I do have them now and will still scan them to see how easy the files are to work with.

The narrow street above shows the good amount of dynamic range the film captured, from the wall in sunlight at top-left through to the garage door in shadow at the bottom-right (the graffiti on it still visible) – a pretty good result.

The only fly in the ointment? Well, the first frame on the roll had light leaks (common with re-spooled rolls) but to be fair, I did get around 27 shots altogether! It’s also not DX coded, which might be an issue if your camera doesn’t allow setting the ISO (and defaults to something unhelpful) – but DX stickers are a thing.

I will almost certainly be ordering some more of this film, once I have room in my fridge.

You can find more images from this shoot over on my Instagram – thanks for reading!

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