Why did they ever make AgfaChrome?

[ch1]

I am deep into my 2005-06 Winter project of finally scanning all my 30+ year of transparencies.

Going back to the beginning - almost always I shot Kodachrome or (for higher speee need) Ektachrome.

30 or so years later the colors still hold strong (with the usual effect of "over the top" reds on Kodachrome and "deeper" blues on Ektochrome).

But for some bizarre reason - admist all this Yellow*l it seems I once shot a couple of rolls of AgfaCrhrome.

Almost all of the slides shot with AgfaChrome are now faded and washed out.

Clearly AgfaChrome had no "stayng power".

Glad that I only used it one or two times. What a crappy film!

R,
George

* PS - in those days Fuji was a new entrant and was often "denigrated" as casting greens and yellows. Anyone else remember that (racist) crap?

 

[summaron]

Maybe someone with a longer memory than I remembers more, but I believe Agfachrome used their own development system in the 70's, probably less color fast than Kodak's E2 or E3. Agfa's palatte favored a rather nice long scale of browns and greens.

At that time even Kodak films from France and from England seemed to have a different balance than those from the US. I worked on a film in the late 60s that we considered sending to the UK for processing because of the softer look. My friends and I were quite taken with the color balance of "Blow Up". I always sought out English Kodachrome for my personal still film use.

Two thing to remember about the great late Agfa: Agfa was more advanced in the thirties in color film technology than Kodak (don't forget than Kodachrome was "outsourced" to two Beethoven quartet playing physicists who worked on this project in a little basement somewhere for a year or so), and Kodak seemed to have benefited from the release of Agfa's patents after the second world war, probably more with Ektachrome than Kodacolor (I don't remember Agfacolor having much of an orange mask). And in the sixties Agfa made one of the greatest and over-the-top b&w printing papers whose blacks had a velvety depth and richness that no other paper has really duplicated. They made some great stuff over the years.