AGFA Photo APX 100 - Monochrome Magic!

I'd thrown a roll of AGFA APX 100 into my bag as a spare.  I'd seemed to be shooting a lot of colour recently so I thought that when the colour roll finished, it would be nice to shoot some Black & White.

So happy that I made that decision!  The colour film ran out at a family get together and I was happy to load the Black & White.

The AGFA APX is a 100 ISO film.  Note that AGFA do not make this film.  AGFA withdrew from photography film making in 2004 after over 100 years of making film chemicals and photographic paper as well as film.  There is a story that there were reels and reels of unused AGFA film kept frozen by the company when it went out of the market.  The story goes that Ferrania, an Italian company, bought that frozen film and packaged it as AGFAPhoto.  Ferrania went bust in 2009 and these days, all film marked AGFAPhoto are produced by FujiFilm in Japan for Lupus Imaging Media.  There is also another story that todays AGFA APX 100 is a re-branded Kentmere 100 (which is produced by Ilford).  I don't know where these stories come from but it is nice to see the AGFA name still appearing on film.

So, I bought this film because it was one that I had not used.  I don't really have 'favourite films' that I prefer to use; I like to get all different types and give them a try!

The results from this film were very pleasing.  The tonal range (shades of grey in B&W film) was very good, depicting what otherwise would have been different colours in a colour film.  There was no real blowouts of brightness and there was detail to be found in the shadows; displayed wonderful exposure latitude.  Usually I have to adjust the contrast a little when I get B&W back from the Lab but there was no adjusting required for this film.

The photos are sharp with a lovely fine grain which makes it a good film for enlargements.

Photos taken with a Minolta XD-7 using a Minolta MD 28-70,, f3.5 zoom

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