Konica Centuria Super 800

Centuria Super 800 was the top speed of Konica's February 2002 refresh, marketed at amateurs working with consumer zoom lenses in low light. The datasheet framing made the design priorities clear: indoor parties, dusk street, shaded portraits, anywhere a slower film could not hold a sharp handheld frame. The MCC and UCC emulsion gave Konica a tighter grain pattern at ISO 800 than the Centuria 800 of 1999 to 2001 had managed.

The February 2002 datasheet lists Super 800 as ISO 800/30, triacetate base, daylight balance, DX-code 26-6, emulsion numbers in the 500 to 549 block. Processing is C-41 or Konica CNK-4. Format is 35mm only. There was never a 120 Centuria Super 800.

Konica claimed highest actual speed in class for the 800 along with excellent granularity for the speed, both of which are partial truths. The grain is tighter than Fujicolor Superia 800 of the same year. It does not approach Kodak Portra 800 in tonal scale or skin rendering, and was never meant to. Super 800 was a drugstore film at the top of the consumer range, priced at roughly half what Portra 800 cost per roll through the early 2000s.

The rendering at dusk and in mixed light is what people who shot it remember. Skin tones under mixed tungsten and window light came back natural without the green shift that affected cheaper 800 stocks of the era, and the film tolerated overexposure better than its spec sheet predicted. Direct noon sun looks muddy on Super 800. That is the trade for the speed. Rate it at 640 for indoor work, leave it at box speed in low ambient outdoors.

Production ended with the Konica Minolta imaging shutdown in March 2006. DNP did not include the 800 in their brief 2007 to 2009 revival, so all surviving Super 800 is genuine Konica stock.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 60 seconds at the negative. The datasheet specifies no compensation from 1/10000 to one second and a single stop at ten seconds.