While interest in nanophase films deposited in vacuum from nanoparticle beams dates back to the early 1970s, difficulties in producing such films has delayed their development and investigation of their interesting, new properties predicted. A new type of high-rate deposition system here and at a few other laboratories has overcome these impediments. It is becoming clear that extremely high surface area/volume nanophase thin films of different materials can be deposited. Flowing argon and helium gas are used to sputter and assist condensation in a cooled-wall chamber. Particle size and numbers depend on the nucleation rate, condensation rate and time available for these processes. To date, films have been deposited using targets made of copper, cobalt, molybdenum, silicon, composite copper-cobalt, tantalum, iron. nickel, chromium, zirconium, aluminum, platinum, gold. tin and niobium. The work reported here is a study of the optical properties of soft-landed nanoparticle films using no acceleration. The soft-landed films are porous with a nanocrystalline structure of similar to 5-10-nm crystallites, as shown by both transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Optical proper-ties were measured using variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry. The optical properties of these films do not match bulk or thin film properties of either the 'pure' metals or their oxides. Instead, the proper-ties are suggestive of a mixture of void, metal, and metal oxide. It is hoped that such materials may be useful in nanostructured optical devices requiring tailored optical properties over nanometer dimensions.