Optik Oldschool are a film lab in Düsseldorf, working out of a converted studio space with Frontier and Noritsu scanners and a community of fairly serious photographers. Labs selling film is unremarkable. Labs going to a coating plant and having film made is not, and that is what puts them here.

OptiColour 200 is their own release, built on the Wolfen NC200 emulsion and coated by InovisCoat in Germany. They toured the factory, tested preproduction batches and argued for the orange base that makes it scan properly, which is the difference between an interesting emulsion and a usable one. It comes in 35mm and 120 medium format, and new colour film in 120 is rarer than new colour film generally.

The SantaColor line also sits with them now, and the two stocks in it share a name and very little else. SantaColor 100 is Kodak Aerocolor IV, an aerial survey emulsion hand spooled into cassettes because the film is too thin for the machinery. SantaColor 800 is a purpose-made still film from the USA, recommended to be shot and processed like Portra 800. Buying one expecting the other is a mistake worth avoiding.

Everything here processes in standard C-41 with no remjet and no special handling. Fresh stock, cold stored, posted from North Essex. Send your exposed rolls back for developing and scanning and we will deal with the chemistry.