Agfachrome 35 mm slides

[geogphotos]

Thus far in my 'back to film' project I have come across hardly any Agfachrome 35mm slides that could pass QC. Some squeeze in as Archive. Most are very grainy, faded/washed out compared to Kodachrome. I have never used this film myself only a small amount of Kodachrome and a lot of Fujichrome ( Velvia mainly).

 

What is your experience of Agfachrome? Is it worth avoiding or can it be okay with a decent photographer/camera combo?

 

 

Edited July 18, 2020 by geogphotos

[Harry Harrison]

2 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Most are very grainy, faded/washed out compared to Kodachrome

I think the difference here is that Agfa won't have aged as well, Kodachrome is renowned both for its quality in terms of colour and fine grain but also for its extraordinary longevity. It was a very special complex process. That's not to say that Agfa was as good as Kodachrome originally but it must have been pretty good as it was widely used in the seventies. I remember that my father was very likely to buy Agfa or Kodachrome, in fact as I write this 'Agfa CT18' sprang to mind, in blue and orange plastic slide boxes as I remember. It too was a special process and had to be sent away to Agfa processing plants. In the end that did for them both, incompatibility with E6 processing.

 

[Phil Crean]

Agfachrome 1000RS! E6 process, shot in the early 90's, scanned a couple of years ago.

 

This was a new film when I shot it, I think it was a freebie I picked up at a launch and shot it alongside some B&W which was what I was commissioned to shoot to see what it was like...

I like the results here, and used it a few more times on some nighttime reportage stuff but those trannies are lost now.

Phil

Edited July 18, 2020 by Phil Crean

[Phil Crean]

Here's another from the same roll, I tweaked the colour after scanning...

 

Phil

[spacecadet]

I used to prefer CT18 to K64 for colour, more of a European look than midsummer noon at Rochester, NY, and put up with the grain, a matter of taste. CT21 was a bit too much! Agfa went from their own process to E6 (they called it AP44) in the mid-80s. I still preferred it.

I have a few up as archive. It's not my experience that they've faded as such, but they've been kept reasonably well. I would treat it as any other archive.

 

[Robert M Estall]

Agfa was a nightmare to dupe. The shadows went a horrid misty green. We had some shots of fairly dark African men and I could never get anything decent out of them. There were several stunning shots from Africa Adorned I could not risk letting the originals out but the dupes were horrid. Then came scanning and I could just about manage, but they certainly were grainy

Edited July 19, 2020 by Robert M Estall