Selections from my last roll of Konica Pro 160

Shortly after scoring a really great deal on two Bobinquick Bulk Loaders* from Garland Camera, I needed some film and remembered seeing some bulk color film at Ultrafine. A few short days later, and I was the proud owner of 100′ of perforated Konica Color Professional 160.

That 100′ netted me 19 rolls, mostly used to test cameras, sadly, plus a few feet of exposed film that probably could’ve been another 20 or 25 frames, and once I got used to all the fun of bulk loading, I really started to enjoy this film, and now that I’ve shot through it all, I’m sad there’s no more available…

I won’t rhapsodize or anything, though, it’s just an older, expired film stock from a company that exited the film business more than a decade ago.

So. If you reuse old film canisters, it’s a good idea to bulk load them in the dark and store them in those black film canisters most black & white films come in. I think the act of bulk loading turns the felt sort of inside out, thereby allowing light to fog the first 8-12 frames. It took me about 12 rolls to figure this out…

I shot this last roll over a weekend, as part of a long-overdue three-part review of Ricoh cameras (the 35 ZF, 500 RF, and 500 ME), and that, maybe, InshaAllah, I’ll get around to in a couple of weeks… I started out with a little drive around Smithfield, a tiny town in Texas that no longer exists, hasn’t since long before Konica Minolta gave up on film, even.

I stopped by the old College Hill Assemblies of God church where we went when I was very young. It’s not an Assemblies of God any more. It’s now a Iglesia Congregacion Mita Inc. church. There were a couple of gentlemen around the back and I spoke to them briefly, hoping to be invited in to have a look around, but they seemed very suspicious of the gringo snooping around with a camera. Alas.

So I drove around a bit, past Patrick Peterson’s house, past the house where I first saw a Playboy Magazine, and back into North Richland Hills proper and back through Euless towards home.

The next day (or maybe a week later?) Hana and I went for a walk around a little park in South Irving (or was it Grand Prairie?). I should keep better notes…

And that was my last roll of Konica Pro 160. It’s a decent film, and I’d shoot it again… I might even shoot another 100′ of it, if I could, though, really, I should stick to currently manufactured films, from companies that intend to stick with the film photography community. The Kodaks and Ilfords and Adoxes and Ferranias of the world, rather than the Konicas and… similar.

Sure, it can be a bit grainy, and is probably best in the 50-100 range, but it was a nice enough film, and I did get one picture out of this roll that I’m particularly happy with, so I’ll just end with that. Enjoy!