Wallace Koopmans Artlog

I bought a few rolls of what Photo Warehouse calls “Ultrafine Colouruption”  Now I’m not complaining because I did expect strange results but the name is a bit of a misnomer as it’s more of a “Mute-elation”.  Inspecting the film edge it becomes clear that this film is actually ORWO NC3  the “NC” apparently stands for Negative Colour, I’m not sure what the 3 means yet but if its a quality scale that goes to ten I think 3 is being generous.  This film apparently hasn’t been manufactured for years and was originally intended as movie film and likely came in canister with a label much like this.

Thanks for the use of the image The Vintage Europe

The film also apparently has a different developing process than C41.  Without it can you really call this a colour film?  Many of the pictures seem to be bereft of any colour other than a cyan cast while some others have a few selective colours that survive in particular green.  Overall I would describe the colours  as muddy. The closest comparison I can think of is the look of faded slides like Anscochrome   Any way you look at it this is a strange film that behaves like nothing else I know.  Ultrafine has it listed as 25 ISO but I suspect you could use a lower setting yet.

I’m also not saying its this films fault (It’s not) but my Konica Auto S3 died half way through the roll.  Repairing it is another post though.  Konica Auto S3 Battery Holder repair

The MT11 should have been a good camera but this one failed to rewind the film at the end of the roll. This forced me to extract the film in my film loading bag.  I did recover some shots from the expired film but because of this rewind faux pas it was also the last roll I put through my already mostly depleted chemistry.  Let that be a lessen to my other cameras that don’t behave. Not only will I disassemble you for your little innards I will treat your film with the same level of care.

Its a shame because the MT-11 was the best of the three levels of cameras Konica made in this line.  The MT-7 had a 36mm F4 lens, the MT-9 had a 35mm F3.5 and the MT-11 sported a 35mm F2.8 4 element lens.  You can’t really evaluate its performance from the image gallery but it did seem to focus well and if I ever come across another one I will give the model another go after I show it this picture.

 

 

 

 

With the Canon Z180u reaching all the way out to an 180mm focal length its imperative that you use a faster film.  In this case I chose to use a good roll of Portra 400 which I usually reserve for cameras I deem to be more deserving but seeing as it was my first and possibly only trip to a sub zero Celsius Alberta I thought I would splurge.  It was worth it, the Z180u is not that bad all things considered especially compared to the Pentax IQzoom 200 . However I think the Olympus Superzoom 160G has slightly better optics. I’ve used this camera a few times now and while the results have never been stellar they haven’t made me want to recycle it either.

The lens on the Z180u is a 38-180mm f5.6 to f12.9 and that’s all I have to say about that.

The images that I didn’t include in the gallery are a good indication of where this cameras weakness lies. Long zoom and low light.