Agfa Scala Experience

[mfogiel]

Before going on my little holiday to the south of France, I have asked for some advice on broadening my choice of film, restricted hitherto mainly to XP2. I am still waiting for the traditional silver film to come back from a specialized lab, but I've already scanned my AGFA SCALA rolls, and here I am ready to share the experience with you. So far, most of the photos I've uploaded from this trip on flickr, are shot on this film, so for a shortcut you can start looking here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59177039@N00/1404112270/in/set-72157602063137880/

and make yourself an idea, however I also have some comments to make.

To begin with, since I've been used to shooting XP2 at ISO 200, shooting Scala at the same speed was comfortable. I used the red and orange filters at times, so the speed was welcome, and, BTW, I have come to regard F4.0 as an aperture at which my best lenses are already at the top, so whenever I can I shoot at this aperture (or wider) and this contributes to the final sharpness of the photo further, because often my shutter speed indicates 1/2000, and the detail afterwards is impressive. Just to show what I mean, here's a shot made at f 4.0 with the (evil) FM3A and Planar 85/1.4, handheld at 1/2000:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1429647252&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

The sharpness of the film is good, but not spectacular, and what has been a slight negative respect to XP2, is the grain, which in certain cases shows a bit, I believe it would be better to shoot Scala at ISO 100, especially for those with a hybrid workflow in mind - already at the "regular" ISO 200, the shots are not very contrasty to begin with, but this is actually helpful in scanning (will touch on scanning further down) - here's an example of visible grain:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1429005007&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

admittedly, the sky has been darkened substantially in PS, so in normal circumstances it would not be as visible.

However, in certain subjects, some grain is not a problem, especially if it comes together with really impressive tonality, especially in the middle to deep shadows range. This is probably my best shot from the trip so far, and when I saw it on the screen I really enjoyed it:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1404241134&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

This incredible middle and lower grays are quite addictive to the extent that you start looking for exposing this characteristic, sometimes at the expense of the highlight range:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1429761932&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

I don't actually want to say, that the dynamic range is short, on the contrary, while not as broad as XP2, it lets you easily play the high contrast scenes like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1404114240&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

Where the limitations show up more, is in the shadows, where sometimes it is harder to recover some detail - in this shot I increased the contrast of the faces, at the expense of some pick up in grain, to make the expression show better:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1426881963&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l



All in all, I find this to be a fantastic film, especially for situations rich in subtle tonal passages, like here:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1429883364&context=set-72157602063137880&size=l

or, incredibly, in case of controlled light (here a flash bounced off the ceiling) portraits like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1434532050&size=l


Now, the practical side of handling Scala has been interesting - this is a silver based film, but a slide, so I started scanning it with ( Nikon CS 9000) the ICE turned on and with Vuescan set to "slide film" option - obviously the results were disastrous, because I got artifacts all over the place caused by ICE, and the images came out posterized, because I was scanning in 16 bit but through 3 channels (less than 6 bit per channel).

After some searching and tweaking, I turned the ICE off, set the input to "B&W negative" , 16 bit, and the film profile to "XP2". At this point I got very good scans (albeit inverted), and only in shots with a light source in, some slight highlight clipping was visible. Then I inverted the images again in PS and made the usual adjustments. The spotting is necessary, but not very heavy, as the good thing about starting with a positive image, is that the dust turns out as dark rather than white spots, and is far less visible.

To sum up, I find this film to be really great, and I think the incredible shadow tonalities are its winning card ( apart from the convenience of not having to make contact prints). I will shoot next rolls at ISO 100 and develop accordingly ( I use a pro lab in Milan, the last which processes Scala here: "Chrome" in Pzza Aspromonte), and hopefully come back with some nice results. If any of you gets to know of a source of this film around, please do one of the two things:
- buy as much as you can for yourself, or...
- send me a HU message, so I will take care of cleaning these supplies for as much as my freezer permits 🙂

 

[robert blu]

Thanks for youe extensive report, i still have three or four film. I feel very sory the film is no more in production but this is the life. I'll try the lab you suggested. ciao
rob&rt

 

[laptoprob]

I just got my two last Scala rolls back from Phototechnik-Berlin.de. Even cheaper than S-Color in Amsterdam used to be!
Any more Scala, yes please!

 

[boilerdoc2]

Rollei has come out with a B&W transparency film (Rollei R) that is the equivalent of Scala. i have mine processed here in the States at DR5 in Denver. It is superb!
Steve

 

[SolaresLarrave]

boilerdoc... where do you get that film? At Freestyle? I wanna know... my Scala supply is rapidly dwindling. 😱

 

[mich8261]

I too shot Scala on my most recent vacation and was very pleased at the results that came back from Main Photo. But unlike mfogiel, I am not having much luck scanning the slides. It is probably foolish for me to attempt this when I have little experience at scanning and with VueScan.

You can see some of the results here. These are much darker than the slides. I know I can correct some of this in PS, but it would seem to make more sense to start with the best scan possible. I tried following the suggestions that mfogiel makes in his post, but I would prefer not to work with an inverted image and I can't seem to find how to tell VueScan to scan in 16 bit. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mfogiel]

Michael,
Firs of all, what you get from the scan is just the starting point, because the scanning process is focused on extracting the entire tonal range information available, not on making a ready print. You have to adjust the levels, curves and brightness/contrast in PS to get a good print later.
If you do not scan as B&W negative, you should be scanning as colour transparency in 48 bit (input) and you can either desaturate in PS, or at the output level you can put 16 bit B&W - look up the advanced options in Vuescan.

 

[mich8261]

thank you mfogiel. I'll have a look when I get back from work.

 

[JeffGreene]

Fomapan R

Fomapan R

Although it's not Scala, you might want to take a look at Fomapan R 100 from Freestyle their new B&W reversal film. I haven't used it, but they rarely lead one astray. I've ordered five rolls, and will report when received. If anyone else has any experience, I would welcome a chance to see your images. Thanks. 🙂

 

[3dfan]

Foma 200 (aka arista edu ultra 200) also makes a nice slide in DR5.

 

[Flinor]

I was a long time Scala shooter and just got my first two rolls of Fomapan R back from dr5. Unfortunately the boorowed camera I used appears to have a meter problem but from a cursory look it appears not to have Scala's tonal range but is quite sharp and slightly more contrasty than Scala. Overall, I'm happy with the few shots that metered correctly and will use it again,

 

[mich8261]

I understand better now. I will scan using Vuescan's RAW format (so I can revisit the files when my skills improve). I will also cut my teeth on colour negs or slides first which I understand to be easier to work with.