One Roll Review - Svema MZ3

image courtesy of the Film Photography Project

It’s been a few years since I have shot with this film that’s available from the Film Photography Project store. I kept putting off shooting with it until I had a little project.  I decided to put a roll in my camera bag for my trip up to Ludington, MI last week. I knew that I’d have the opportunity to photograph in the dunes near Lake Michigan, so what better use for this ultra-low ISO film?

What is MZ3?

Like several other film stocks available from the FPP store, Svema is the manufacturer of MZ3. It’s an extremely fine-grained blue-sensitive (orthochromatic) film with an ISO of 3. It lacks an anti-halation layer, and the polyester film base is subject to light-piping. Light piping is when the light hitting the exposed film leader is carried by the film base farther into the canister. Usually, it mostly results in some exposure around the sprocket holes, but in severe cases, it can fog the first few frames. Therefore, MZ3 is one of those films that should be loaded either indoors or in the shade, and ought to be stored in opaque film canisters until used. Those new aluminum film cans that I see with some third-party film reloads would be ideal.

Since the MZ3 film is so slow, it’s going to be ideal for landscape, architecture, etc. However, with a fast lens of f/2, one could shoot handheld wide-open on a sunny day. Using sunny-16 as a guide, f/16 in full sun would be about 1/3 of a sec exposure.  The equivalent at f/4 would be 1/30 to 1/60 sec. Years ago, I shot MZ3 with a ND filter to get really long exposures at a busy area in Ann Arbor. Tripod-mounted, of course. 

I loaded the MZ3 into my trusty Nikon F3HP, which I consider to be one of Nikon’s best film SLRs. For me, it’s a great photographic tool that’s never let me down. I used manual exposure and an external light meter to make the photographs on this roll. I also used a tripod, since I was generally shooting at f/16. The ISO dial on the F3 only goes down to ISO 12, and at that setting, the exposure compensation dial only allows about +1.3 stops. So, manual exposure it was. If memory serves correct, most of my shots were around 1/8 sec.

After I returned home, I developed the MZ3 in HC110 dilution H for 9 minutes and 15 seconds. That gave me quite good tonality. Since this is a blue sensitive film, greens are quite dark, providing a lot of contrast between the sand and the vegetation.

light piping along the film rebate at the beginning of the roll

Here are some examples from that roll. Overall, I quite like the results, though some images needed more post-processing than I expected. That’s the fun aspect of these low-ISO oddball films - they are not going to be boring, that’s for sure. I highly recommend that you try this film - and since it does not require special developers to achieve good results, it’s a good choice for a really low-iso film experience.  The MZ3 definitely gave me a look quite different from a 100 ISO panchromatic film.