Superia 400
The roll sold at every pharmacy counter, and therefore the film most family photographs were actually taken on.
Superia 400 arrived in 1998 into a market already decided by price and availability rather than by anybody choosing it on merit. It was the film you bought because it was the film in front of you.
That makes it the most historically significant emulsion on this list, and the one least often written about seriously.
The Most Photographed Emulsion
For roughly a decade, consumer colour negative at ISO 400 was the default recording medium of ordinary life in much of the world. Birthdays, holidays, school photographs, the last years before phones — a very large proportion of them were exposed on stock like this.
If your memory of the nineties has a particular colour, this is probably where it comes from. Not because Superia was the best emulsion of the decade, but because it was the most photographed one.
That is worth stating plainly, because nostalgia tends to attribute the look to artistry when it more often belongs to whatever was cheap and on the shelf.
Consumer colour negative rewards overexposure just as professional stock does. Rating a 400 film at 200 costs you nothing you were using and gives the shadows somewhere to live — which is exactly what cheap film needs most.
The Fourth Layer
Superia’s technical distinction was an additional colour-sensitive layer beyond the usual three. Fujifilm added it to improve rendering under fluorescent lighting, which was the lighting of every shop, office, school corridor and community hall the film was likely to be used in.
The practical effect is that Superia handles mixed and artificial light more gracefully than its price suggests, and it is part of why indoor snapshots on this stock look less sickly green than they might otherwise.
The palette that results — green-leaning midtones, punchy but not refined colour, visible grain nobody tried to hide — is what the model reproduces.
Availability
Superia has been progressively withdrawn across markets, with names and packaging shifting as production consolidated. What is on the shelf now under a Fujifilm label at ISO 400 is not necessarily the same emulsion that was there in 2005.
This matters if you are buying with a specific look in mind. Check what you are actually getting rather than assuming continuity from the name, and treat old reviews with some suspicion.
It is also why we describe the model as being after Superia 400 rather than as the film. The reference is a moment in a product line, not a fixed thing you can still purchase.
The Model
In the film lab this emulsion is modelled as Drugstore Colour 400. The strength dial scales the model itself rather than blending it with your original, so zero returns your file mathematically untouched and 150 pushes it past anything the film did. The artifacts dial controls dust, scratches, leaks and fog separately.
as Drugstore Colour 400.Free, no account, and the photo never leaves your device — the developing happens in your browser.
If You Want to Shoot It
Where This Model Falls Short
Drugstore Colour 400 is Vintizer’s own model, built by studying how Superia 400 behaved. It is described as being after that film because that is what it is — a model, not the film. Film names on this site identify the real products being discussed and belong to their respective owners. Vintizer is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any film manufacturer. Full notice.