A fun little German one

The analog camera market is very focused around a few certain brands and models such as the Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblads and Zeiss’s. But cameras that does not hit the «name requirement» can be just as good and fun to shoot with. Today, I went out to a flea market run by some friends and I found a little interesting camera that I just had to buy. The camera in question was produced from 1957 to 1961 in Germany. With such a short production span, only four years, it is an interesting little camera that probably didn’t hit the market as well as its producer would have hoped.

The camera is an AGFA AMBI SILETTE. A little rangefinder camera with interchangeable lenses and some very clever patents on it. The camera has a Synchro Compur leaf shutter and its highest shutter speed is 1/500th second. When changing between lenses, you can use a little switch on the top to set the viewfinder up with different lines to help you compose while using the rangefinder unit. I found the rangefinder on this camera to work beautifully even after all these years, and the main lens, the 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar is clean and appears to be rather sharp based on this test. The tele lens that also came with it, the 90mm, has severe fungus on it, and I’d guess it would affect the image quality, although, I have not really tried it.

The AGFA AMBI SILETTE – straight from the flea market.

Since I knew that a camera purchase would be a possibility, I brought along a roll of Fomapan 100 and two camera batteries. The Agfa is fully mechanical, so the batteries were not used, but I loaded the roll of Fomapan 100 and went for a little walk at Husodden, to try it out and see how it felt to use. Mind you, I hadn’t really read anything about this camera in advance and I had not even heard about this particular model. So this is a true first impression entry.

My first little quest, was realizing that the rangefinder and viewfinder is hidden behind a little covering lid that you have to flap open before using it. This is a really clever invention both because it protects the cleanliness of the glass behind it, but also because it works as a sun shield making focusing easy and smooth without any disturbing sun-glare. After that, the camera is very straight forward and simple to use.

Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

Age is noticeable on this camera, but it seems like it just will need some use to get back into life. Both shutter speeds and aperture settings seem to be in reasonable working order, but I did not try the longer shutter speeds this time as I shot hand held in the September sunshine. My guess is that shutter lag will be present from shutter speeds lower than 1/60th and that the lens will show diffraction at f22. But this must be for another time.

The most important error I found with this camera, was the fact that my first shots were all double exposed, and I only got a few decent shots on my roll. This seems to be some lag due to lack of use, and I am sure this will sort itself out with some use. I will not give this camera a CLA. That would probably cost more than the camera is worth in 2021 money.

An old barn by a field – Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

The shot above, was the first shot on the roll that turned out to be just exposed once, and no images after this one showed any sign of double exposure. This leads me to believe that there probably isn’t anything wrong with the film advance other than lack of use.

The focus ring was light, but still firm and very pleasant to use, as well were the rings for setting shutter speeds and aperture opening. The camera seems to have been very well looked after and I believe it to have been serviced before it was stored. It can indeed seem like that. The back door on the camera is somewhat sticky, and the camera came with one of those horrendous leather cases that looks good enough, but makes loading and unloading film very unpractical and the camera bulky and larger than necessary to use. I took it out of the leather case when I used it, and there are no signs of light leaks from the camera.

A tree root – Agfa Ambi Silette – Agfa 50mm f2.8 Color Solinar lens – Fomapan 100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

All in all, the little outing with the Agfa was a fun experience, and I will definitely be shooting this camera again. The only slight annoyance is the patent for rewinding the film. It is one of those that doesn’t have a lever for rewinding but just a small knob that you wear your fingers off while using. But with a camera this good, it is worth some sore fingers.

A little success

If you have followed me over the last months, you know that I bought a 100ft roll of Agfa APX100 a while back. It was the cheapest film available on the market and I was curious about how the film would work for me and my type of photography. So far, I have not really had a lot of success with it. I have studied the data-sheet for the film and I have tried it out in different situations. Some of the unlucky shoots have been due to poor bulk-loading skills or bad cassettes, and some has been due to my lack of understanding of how the film works. This time, however, I went a completely different direction. Instead of shooting landscapes, I went for an abandoned railroad track and I chose a very sunny and contrasty day to get deep contrasts and shadows in my images.

After many headaches with very grainy images, even when using fine grain developers such as ID-11, I chose to just embrace the grain and develop with Rodinal. I have used Rodinal with this film before, and I must say that from my experience with this film, after shooting it in different conditions and with different subjects, I find Rodinal to be the best developer with it. It actually produces a finer and less pronounced grain with Rodinal 1+100 than it does with ID-11.

Petri Racer – Agfa APX100 – Rodinal 1+100 1 hour.

Shooting vegetation with this film is not the best idea. It seems to be rather over sensitive to certain tones of green and gives a very mushy feel on all types of vegetation without any real separation. However, when shooting metal and dead objects, the film seems to produce rather beautiful contrast and lovely sharpness. I would think this film would be ideal for street photography with good light as it really works for this kind of shoot. It does benefit from a slight overexposure of one stop and the development process with Rodinal seems to get the most out of the contrasts in this film. Not that I am in any way pretending to be a master film reviewer.

I chose the Petri Racer for this outing. This camera is a small rangefinder camera made in the 1960s by the Japanese company Petri. A much forgotten brand today, they are really nice and quirky little cameras with mostly working rangefinder units even after about 60 years of use. The Petri was also the first camera I featured on this blog back in 2018 when the blog was new. I find that the world looks really nice through the lens of a Petri Racer, and it is a camera that I really enjoy using.

Shooting railroad track details is not something I do very often, but I really enjoyed the outing. I also found that finally I had some decent results with the Agfa film, where I was actually happy with the images I captured. My initial goal for the trip was to make three darkroom prints that I was happy with. And this time, I did succeed.

Shooting a very cheap film with a very simple camera does indeed make sense as well. I would think that most users of simple cameras like this would generally use cheaper films such as Kodak Colorplus and Fuji C200 for color and Fomapan or Agfa for black and white. For my personal taste, I find the Fomapan to be the better option of the latter, but as I mentioned earlier, I can see that the Agfa would make sense to use if you were shooting a lot of urban, street and architecture and you want the raw effect of this film.

Would I recommend the APX100? To some extent. It for sure is a decent film and if you are mainly snapping around as you go, you would probably be very satisfied with this film. However, if you are shooting a lot of landscapes, I would rather go for the Fomapan 100 which I find to work better for vegetation. And yes, develop with Rodinal.

APX 100, another go!

Yet another time, I find myself out trying the ultra-cheap AGFA APX100 that I managed to buy 100 ft of earlier this year. This time, I loaded it into an old Delta 400-casette because I wanted to use it in one of my more automatic cameras. My initial thought was to use the Minolta Dynax camera I own, but since I loaded it a cartridge DX-coded 400, and the fact that I cannot override the ISO on the Minolta, I had to look another way for this outing, and I opted for the Nikon F80 with the Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm Zoom lens I used in the last entry.

I have previously struggled quite substantially with making this film work for my type of photography, and for this time, I decided to go out to a logging area close to where I live. When you are cutting down trees in Norway, you have to let some trees stand to accommodate for the loss of animal homes, and this creates a rather interesting atmosphere where some trees really stand out. This very contrasty scene should help the film to get this contrasts out rather than creating some bland mushy mess, as it tends to do with very green scenes.

A lonely thistle – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

For positive things, I really found that the sky was brought out really well on these images, if that is due to the exposure or the film I am not sure, but it does create some extra mood and context to the images which I find really nice. Also, this time, I chose to overexpose the film a stop in exposure and develop for the full film speed of 100. Ive found that this gives me the best negatives with this setup and I chose to develop with ID-11. I am not sure if I find ID-11 to be a good match for this film as it seems to enhance the feeling of the grain somewhat. The film itself is extremely grainy for a 100 ISO film, and maybe the best idea is just to embrace the grainy feeling and go with Rodinal.

A lonely birch – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

As you can see in the sky on this image, the grain structure of this film is very coarse and raw even with a fine-grain developer like ID-11, and I actually find it rather unpleasant in these images. Just to rule out the fact that this could be down to my scanner, Epson V600, I went for a quick dark-room session making a print of the Thistle-image, and the grain is very prominent even in relatively small enlargements such as 4×5 or 10×8. This film might not really work very well for landscape-photography in any way, and I think my next experiment with this film will be more in the fields or architecture or urban details and embracing the rawness and graininess of these negatives.

Tree-lines – Nikon F80 w Voigtländer Skopar 28-80mm f3,5-5,6 – Agfa APX100@50 – Ilford ID-11 1+1

I actually really like the composition of the image above, but it is clear that it does not really work with this setup of film, camera and lens. I like that centered slightly diagonal stem and the upright spruce behind it, bit I do not care that much for the mushy gray grassy-area where one cannot really distinguish what is grass and what is small spruces. Also, the sky shows the raw grain that I feel is rather unpleasant even though it makes for somewhat of a moody feeling.

Going slightly panoramic with Agfa APX 100

Over the last couple of weeks, I have done a lot of testing, trial and error of the cheapest film on the European market. The Agfa APX100. I have tried it for different types of scenes and landscapes and even in some cases some urban stuff. All in all, I am slightly underwhelmed by its performance and I have seen it having a really big tendency to become a grey mesh or insanely contrasty. This made me do something that I figured that I should have done far earlier. I looked into the data sheet for the Agfa APX100 looking for its spectral sensitivity curve. And I must say that this sensitivity curve was something I really did not expect. Compared to the films I have shot before and compared it to, the APX100 is not even similar at all.

The curve is jumping up and down all the way, indicating that this film has a dip both between blue and green, as most panchromatic films tend to have, but also a dip into the yellows. This would explain the difficulty I have in soft light where grass and boggy areas are shifting between greens and yellows. I’ll ad the curves for FP4 plus and Fomapan 100 under for comparison. These films have a much calmer curve and I am much more comfortable with films like that.

I then figured that maybe if I chose to shoot very high contrast scenes with this film and develop with Rodinal, that this would be a better use for its qualities. I therefore broke out the panoramic adapter and rolled a full length film, and went out as a cold-front marched in over the town to take images of trees along the lake.

Trees by the lake – Zeiss Ikon Nettar – Agfa APX100@50 – Rodnial 1+100

This time, I really saw something happen that I liked with this film. Even though my stand development technique gave me some slight maks on the negatives and that I got a weird light leak on one of the frames, I am very happy with how this outing went. The high sensitivity to blue made the sky blow out somewhat but the contrasty clouds made them come back in a really nice way, painting the skies beautifully.

I chose to once again meter my exposures at 50 rather than 100, and I think metering a stop above is a very good idea with this film as it tends to get «inky blacks» very easily. It does also seem that Rodinal is a good choice when working with APX 100. I does really give a nice result. I chose stand-development for this round because I think it is a very relaxing way of developing films giving a very smooth result. And I found it to really get the nice tonality out of the Agfa.

I should have looked into the data-sheet before beginning the work with this film, but now, a little bit wiser, I will use the film for its best use rather than at its weak points. For the rest of the bulk. For my morning soft-light grass-shoots, I will use FP4 or HP5.

Morning mist and APX100

This last week has had really beautiful mornings and the other day, I decided to go for another tryout with the bulk of Agfa APX100. I bought this bulk a while back as I found that it was the cheapest bulk-film on the market and I was curious about its performance and capabilities. So far, I have not been really sold on this film. I find it grainy, slow and to lack latitude. I also find that, even with a very sharp lens and a very accurate camera, I get very inconsistent results. In this entry, I paired it up with my Olympus OM-1 and the 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens.

From my previous experience with this film, I have found that metering it at 50 – a whole stop over-exposure – and developing for box-speed typically gives me the best results. Also, the yellow filter usually gives me a bit more contrast and definition in my negatives. This was also my tactic for this outing, and my results were just as inconsistent as they have been previously.

Since it was very early in the morning, and I wanted to travel very light, I chose to leave the light meter at home and rely on the light metering app I have on my phone. This is a very simple light meter, but I can easily meter at different places in the scene to get a decent exposure. I have done this in many instances before and never had any issues with poor exposures. If hesitant, I double up with an additional exposure just to be sure that I have at least one usable one. I’ll honestly say, that I only got one out of my 15 exposures this time to be anything that I would refer to as a decent image and what I had in mind while composing.

Over the misty hill. Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

In this first image, which is the only one that I am actually happy with, the film manages the masterpiece of being both over and underexposed at the same time when the range was within about 4 stops. Even so, I find this image to really convey the mood of this morning very well and I like its dark gloominess. However, I know that this image would have looked far better on both Fomapan 100 and FP4 plus, which both are very affordable alternatives to the Agfa APX100, and that gives me more consistent results.

For my second composition, I wandered into the woods looking for a slow-flowing river passing under a very simple bridge. This image did not turn out in any way the way I thought it would. To me, this image is just a grey mesh with a lot of grain and lacking definition on what the real subject was. Even with heavy dodging and burning, I still am not convinced with this result. I also made three bracketed images of this, and all of them are severely lacking on definition.

Crossing the river – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

In the two upcoming images, you see the main issue with this film, completely lost shadow-detail even with a full stop over-exposure and metered for the shadows. I will keep trying this film for different purposes, but I must say, that it does not look like this film is for me and my use. I’ve read about people using this film for one or two stop push-processes, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why, when I have these issues when overexposing it.

Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1.8 & yellow filter – Agfa APX100@50 Ilford ID-11 1+1

Checking the bulk

Around a week ago, I went out shooting with the Canon T70 and a bulk-loaded Agfa APX 100 film. When I pulled the negatives out of the tank, I realized that it had somehow gotten exposed to light at some point and that there were a lot of different light leaks that could not have come from the camera. After inquiring around online, I found that the most likely explanation would be that the bulk-loader itself was not light tight and that it might have impacted the film either when stored inside the bulk-loader, or when rolled. I therefore decided to take the bulk loader into the darkroom, and I rolled up one little roll of film (approximately 12 frames) just to check whether there was a problem with the whole bulk, indicating a problem with the light seals on the loader.

To make sure there were no other differences, I used the same cassette when rolling, and I used the same techniques, only that I did everything in the dark. I then put the roll of film into my Olympus OM-1, which I know have good light seals, and set off to make some test shots.

A bench and a field – Olympus OM-1 Agfa APX 100 – Rodinal 1+100 1 hour

I spotted some light leaks on this roll as well, especially on the last shots on the roll, the one that had been closest to the previous loaded film, but the frames from «deeper in the bulk» seemed untouched by the light leaks. The light leaks were also consistent to one end of the frames vertically, so it cannot be anything with the shutter or light seals on the camera. I guess my experiment showed me that the bulk-loader is not 100% light tight, and I will apply black tape to it next time I fill it with a new roll.

For the film itself. I have found that what works for me, is shooting this film at 50 (or even lower) and using a yellow filter. This gives me the shadow details and a decent spread of greys. However, I will probably not buy this film again. To me, it is grainier than Kentmere 400 and I expect finer grain and more shadow-details at box-speed for a 100 speed film than what I get from the Agfa APX100.

Windy summers day – Olympus OM-1 Agfa APX 100 – Rodinal 1+100 1 hour

I also this time shot the Agfa at 50, but since I used a yellow filter, I set my light meter to ISO 25, giving an additional stop of compensation for the filter. I chose to go with Rodnial stand development on this particular test, because I wanted to see how the Agfa film would look with this kind of «lazy» development process. I think the process got some grain out of the film, and that if used on a rainy og foggy day, that this combination could work really well. It does really set the «moody» tone in the images. I would, however, get a rather similar result with pushing Tri-X, and this is a film with far broader applications.

Olympus OM-1 Agfa APX 100 – Rodinal 1+100 1 hour

Another go with APX100

A while back, I made a post where I tested out a film I had never tried before. Agfa APX100. I was not 100% sold on this film at that point as I found it to very easily lose the shadows even when meters specifically for the shadows. After this outing, I have tried it on multiple occasions. I have tried pulling it both one and two stops. Shot at 50 with 20% reduction in development time seems to work the best of these. If shot at 25 and pulled, it comes out dull and grey and you have no shadows, nor highlights left to work with.

In this entry, I am covering my experience with shooting it at 50 and making no changes to the development time. A full stop over-exposure and develop for the full film speed. This test; however, became somewhat untrustworthy, as it seems that the film somehow must have been exposed to light. My guess, reading the negatives, is that the exposure to light must have happened after the images were taken, since the frame itself is visible through the light-leak area. I will include a raw-scan that shows the issue.

The interesting light leak situation. (Unedited scan)

Now, I have not had any problems with the bulk-roll nor with the cassettes or loader before, and my Canon T70 has never shown any signs of light leak. Not that this kind of light leak would happen in the camera anyway. It does not show on all the images, but on most of the,. I was able to salvage 4 images from this roll, maybe the best ones, who knows.

My trip this day, went through a forest-area and into a swampy area next to a very rarely visited forest-pond called Sevalstjernet. I chose this location because I knew it would give me a very varied range of objects to photograph as well as nature. I had never visited this pond before, and I strapped on my wellies, a choice that would be crucial for this outing, as I most of the time waded around in bog and fen. With my normal hiking-shoes, I would have been soaking after just a few minutes.

I was also accompanied by a cloud of black-flies. It is nice to have company when you are out walking, but I would have preferred people or a dog rather than flies. On the plus-side, the huge swarm of flies seems to have kept the mosquitoes and horseflies away, so I should maybe me grateful.

A forest watch-tower – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

It also seems like my idea of exposure helped me greatly on retaining the shadows in this film. I do think, however that this film could be over-exposed another stop in normal development without any issue. I do still have some inky-blacks on some of my scans. Based on mob experience this far, I will not buy another roll of APX-100. FP4 plus isn’t that much more expensive, and it is a far better film. An in between, Fomapan 100 is a film I have found to work very well for me.

Some beard – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

One of the things I love with the Canon T70, is its lens. The little, cheap 50mm FD lens performs consistently very well and is very sharp and flexible. I know there are better FD-lenses out there, but there is something to this lens that just appeals to me. I like the way it portrays the world to my images, especially when photographing the «smaller things» like this little beard-moss on a tree. I think this one was shot at f2,8 but it could also be f4. Since I lost all frames before and after this one, I am not sure.

Finally I made it into the swampy area around the lake. I think the correct term for this land would be either fen or mire, but I am not sure whether it is acidic or alkaline ground here. My guess would be acidic given its vegetation, but I might be wrong here. Sadly, what I would think is my best shot of this pond got lost in light-leaks, but I will add the one that survived.

Sevalstjernet with the farm – Canon T70 w Canon FD 50mm f1,8 – Agfa APX100 @ 50

Testing out some cheap film

I am not usually bulk-rolling film, but not long ago, I got hold of a 100ft roll of Agfa APX100 for very cheap money. I decided to give it a go, as I have previously been very fond of affordable films like the Fomapan 100 which I also tend to bulk-load, as it is relatively inexpensive to do. I have found my way of exposing and developing Fomapan 100 that gives me the results I want. This method includes exposing at EL 50 and shave 20% off the recommended development time with Kodak Xtol 1+0.

As the Agfa APX100 is a brand new film for me, I decided to shoot it at box-speed and develop as the massive development chart suggests. As Kodak Xtol have been out of stock in Norway for a very long time now, I decided to use Ilford ID-11 to develop this film. I chose the dilution 1+1.

Winter leaves as Spring emerges – Konica Autoreflex TC – 50mm Hexanon f1.8 – Agfa APX100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

Immediately, when looking at the negatives and their scans, they appear slightly under-exposed, and it is clear to me that this film needs more exposure than I gave it at this first tryout. Especially definition in the darker areas is easily lost, and I think that a slight pull could give me a flatter negative that will be easier to work with in post-processing. My next roll will be tested with the method I use for Fomapan 100, and I will evaluate those results as well.

Spring by a frozen lake – Konica Autoreflex TC – 50mm Hexanon f1.8 – Agfa APX100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

For this test, I chose to go with the Konica Autoreflex TC. A camera I bought this autumn and that I have found to work very well and be reasonably accurate at shutter speeds faster than 1/60, which is the area in which I chose to shoot this time. The lens is a very standard Hexanon 50mm f1.8, a lens that is reasonably sharp and is easy to focus. Some of the images were shot using a yellow filter and some without the yellow filter.

The film has the amount of grain that I would expect from a 100 ISO traditional film and it seems to me as it behaves very much like the Fomapan 100 in its sensitivity. The lighting conditions on the day were quite contrasty, and I find that to be very clear from the negatives. They seem more contrasty than I would expect from these conditions with my standard go-to slow film, FP4 plus. That said though, it is important to clarify that I am basing this on just one outing and one roll of film, and that I by no means am a film-expert. I will use this film some more over the coming weeks, and find out how well it works for me and how I can get it to work for my style and preference.

Rocks in the ice – Konica Autoreflex TC – 50mm Hexanon f1.8 – Agfa APX100 Ilford ID-11 1+1

What I found when working with these scans in Lightroom, was that getting the correct contrast-levels was tricky. You cannot go to far before you lose your shadows and you easily blow out the whites. The images taken with the yellow filter in general give a better balance in the contrasts.