Olympus iS-3000 ZLR Zoom lens Reflex, with Expired Fuji Reala 100

This is a short review of the Olympus iS-3000 zoom lens SLR (aka iS-1 an L-1), for which I shot an expired roll of Fuji Reala 100. In hindsight I should’ve shot with a new fresh roll of Kodak Ektar or similar fine grained film as I experienced a horrible green colour shift on this long expired roll.

Fuji Superia Reala 100 used to be my favourite negative film back about 20 years ago, with lovely saturated warm colour and Fujifilm have long abandoned it. I bought two rolls from eBay and after looking at the results I doubt I’ll be shooting the other (which has gone into the bin).

This Film used to be very fine grained, warm, saturated, popping blues and reds, excellent skin tones and perfect for the summer.

The expired roll I shot is a mess and anything I tried in LR5 couldn’t save it or get even a sniff of what it used to be like back again. If anyone has any in the freezer from new, do let me know!

Back to the ZLR

Olympus I believe did manufacture an AF 35mm SLR the OM-707 and 101 but they were low end half baked attempts, instead they mainly concentrated on their manual Focus OM range.

Having been left behind by every other major camera manufacturer they decided to change tact during the 90s and build the ZLR Zoom lens Reflex or Bridge Camera. A name coined by Olympus. These are proper SLR’s rather than viewfinder cameras with added AF, such as the AZ-330 which I remember David Bailey using in a TV commercial – you can see that classic advert here with the late great George Cole

The range kicked off with the iS-1000 in 1990 and this model in 1992 – Olympus subsequently released more models during the 90s but this is said to be the best of them. You can check out some marketing here from Olympus website on the wayback machine.

they continued the trend with the Camedia C-8080 and the E10/E20 ZLR’s.

The body is quite well designed, you can tell that it influenced the design of the Olympus Evolt E-1 DSLR with it’s lop sided body and firm hand grip. It has a camcorder style strap on the side and an LCD screen at the rear. Everything is in a good position and you can easily zoom in and out (3 seconds retract/stretch) lock exposure, spot meter (as on the OM4) and change aperture.

Most of the functions of the Olympus iS-3000 are accessed using the LCD screen and buttons. The body is all plastic, quite hefty but does creek a bit. The Viewfinder is amazingly bright and quite large and very clear.

The Olympus iS-3000 AF is crisp and quick considering the age of it and you can capture kids and pets quite quickly and easily. Metering is pretty much nailed, but then again it is negative film so has a huge amount of latitude and is very forgiving.

The Olympus iS-3000 35-180mm lens I’m sure is a Zuiko though Olympus spent a few years neglecting the Zuiko markings I recall. It’s not as wide as I would’ve liked and a stop slower at both ends than which would’ve been ideal but even so it is tack sharp with good contrast and when extended focusses quick and accurately enough for fine portraits with a lovely out of focus area at f5.6.

I again wish I’d shot this using a nice new film but no use dwelling on that now. The lens as I said is lovely, contrasty and tack sharp. It doesn’t handle flare as well as high end modern lenses but at least the lens flare isn’t ugly. It also has some barrel distortion.

Overall the camera produces very nice results and effortlessly – these were just point and shoot in Aperture priority.

Here’s a list of Olympus iS-3000 specs:

• Modes: Program, Aperture-Priority, Shutter-Priority, Manual
• Top shutter speed: 1/2000sec
• Max frame rate: 2fps
• Viewfinder: 85% coverage
• Metering modes: Multi Pattern, Spot, Centre-weighted – Average
• Flash sync: 1/100
• 50cm close focus distance
• 96g and used CR123 Battery

Overall I quite enjoyed my experience with this Olympus iS-3000; they’re cheap to buy and give you fantastic results (make sure you use a good quality film which would be worthy of that lovely lens).

I’m going to keep mine, put a nice roll of new Film through it and might write another post detailing my results and thoughts.

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