APX new emulsion

Hello coffeeholics,

the distributor Agfaphoto had launched 2 new films after the broke of  Agfa Leverkusen and the deep-frozen stock of  old APX was sold out. The  APX 100 and 400 "new emulsion" have nothing to do anymore with the old Agfa APX, are made by Ilford and are close relatives to the Kentmere films, but must not be 100 % identical. Ilford is producing a lot of OEM stuff nowadays and they all remind at the Kentmere films somehow. Especially the less than optimal halo protection is a common feature though it doesn't disturb under most conditions.

Here is my first impression of the APX 400 new. Maybe it's the same as the Kentmere 400, surely different from the RPX 400, who is the best of them all imo after a somehow inconsistent history. But that's another story, already told here, see the older posts concerning the RPX 400.


Update: all APXn and Kentmere are identical. Also I couldn`t see a difference between RPX 400 and APX/Kentmere 400 anymore, it seems Ilford didn`t want a RPX to be better than a Kentmere. I can't see why I should buy a more expensive RPX 400 anymore.

I never liked the Kentmere 400, quite big grain and very push resistant, and the new APX 400 behaves like his brother. But it has the big advantage to be easily available here at big drugstores like Muller. Because I had agreed a short dated shooting in a small coffee roastery and no time to order new fast film, I decided to give the APX 400 new a chance. First trials with small snippets showed that not more than ISO 400 is makeable and the grain was - let's say - very visible and nice. Furthermore I decided this to be a feature and not a bug and live with the grain. So, if you want a film with nice big and sharp grain, here it is, developed in coffee.

 The films were exposed at EI 400 with a Minolta X-500 and 2.8/28 and 1.4/58 Rokkor lenses. Developed in Caffenol-C-H (rs) with 1 g/l pot. bromide, 13 minutes at 25 °C which is about the same as 20 minutes at 20 °C, agitation first minute continuously, then 3x every 30 seconds. Because the film tends to give a lower contrast, this agitation sceme was used.

Here are some results from the shooting, scanned with a dslr, macro gear and at 20 MP resolution. White point and black point were set and some contrast curve adjustments made. No sharpening at all in pp.

As always, right click on the pics to open in a new tab to see the biggest available size.

The whole set can be seen here at full resolution:
roastery at flickr

Happy developings - Reinhold