Review: Agfa APX 25 ASA

Anyone entering the world of lomography, it needs to know, to understand, to seek their own style, their own way … How can do all this? By dint of experience, continuing to do tests or just “eating” rolls as if they were peanuts! And ’that’s how I fell in my hands to try a 25 ASA … How can you resist!

This spring, while visiting some bazaar, I found this film; it was almost a gift! With such low ASA, it needs a lot of sun. It’s a black and white film. I was curious to the limit!

So I always put to use such films for a mini vacation by the sea, and then finish the film with a bit of random walks or at home. Honestly, the results are very satisfactory in most cases (regarding exposure, although some tend to be visibly overexposed, I’m happy). However, I cannot deny that I was a little “disappointed” by the hues of gray that I got, almost a gray ash. I do not find them exciting, because they lack something (perhaps because I’m just used to Ilford Black and White). For 35mm films that I test, usually, I prefer to use my Pentax camera, as it helps me a lot to get photos right. For this film, the texture is quite thin, and hardly catches the eye (the exact opposite of what I was looking for).

There are only two shots that got me almost completely satisfied:

If you play a little with long exposure in bulb mode, you can also get good results:

Finally, I noticed one thing in these shots:

For the sun-exposed areas, they show these delicate shades of gray ash (giving a result of overexposure), while the shaded areas tend to have a strange shade of gray, almost a little like sepia. Note what that I did using my Canoscan 9000F: scanned as negative on the same strip, with all settings automatically correct for negative and black and white. There are 3 shots that came out correctly, but one shot has this strange and pleasant sepia tone. See the “wrong” and “correct” version below.

View the complete album here.

Personally, even if it does not meet my needs, since it costs just a few euros, it’s a film which I highly recommend, especially for its ease of use during summer ! I’d be very curious to try it on an LC-A+!

written by tyron_lannister on 2011-12-20 #gear #sea #agfa #review #white #black #pentax #lomography #toscana #canoscan #9000f #user-review #siena #cervia #monterigigoni