Agfa APX 100 for a day

Agfa APX 100 for a day is a short review on what this economical film has to offer.

Agfa APX 100 is an economical film that is not very well known. Why? First of all it is important to know  that this is freshly produced film and not old expired stock from the original Agfa factory. The price is good and it also has it’s own particular ‘look’. Grain is there but it is very smooth and barely noticable. This is not a high contrast film but it also does not have a wide mid tone range.

No easy summer

Black, dark subjects and dark reds will be very dark with a noticeable loss of shadow details. On the other side white is not really white. Even very bright skies are light grey. This is the Agfa APS ‘look’ and it means that you can over expose this film by a stop with out getting blown out highlights. In fact I would recommend you shoot this film at ASA 80 (half stop over) or ASA50 (1 stop over) to get some shadow details  while still having good details in the highlights. Keep in mind that this might mean brighter mid tones. With Agfa APX 100 skin tones do not look good as you can see in the two photos in this blog post.

This is an interesting film that is well suited for bright sunny days, a ‘summer’ film to use on the beach, on holiday and very good for street photography although i would stay away from using it for portraits. Ilford Fp4+ is more suited for skin tones, when exposed correctly. For me personally  I would go for  Agfa APX 400, Ilford HP5+ or Kodak Tri X on cloudy and over cast days since ASA400 films have more contrast that will help with flat lighting.

Feast musician

All the photos here were shot at ASA100 and developed for ASA100. At the moment i am shooting a roll of Agfa APX 100 at ASA50 in the same situations as i was in for this roll.

Photography by © Alan Falzon. Developed and scanned by Darkroom Malta.

*Click on photo to see full size

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