Agfa Ultra 50

perkeleellinen · Apr 9, 2009

Last year, with help of a German friend, I obtained ten rolls of Ultra 50 expired 2002 (I also got 30 rolls of APX25). Last week I shot a test roll and sent the film to Spectrum Photographic in the UK who produced an optical contact print.

These scans are faithful to the print:

ASA25

ASA50

ASA100

What I found interesting is that there is more detail in the reds at 100ASA.

Looking at the contact sheet it seems that the film hasn't lost much speed at all over the years and could maybe benefit from a rating of about ASA80 or so.

Anyway, the point of this thread. I'd love to hear from any other Ultra 50 users. What did you use this film for? I normally prefer a more subtle colour rendering!

stefan4u · Apr 9, 2009

High perkeleellinen!

Malicious tongues gossips that the increased saturation of the older Agfa Ultra is mainly caused by overexposure. This is exactly that what you see in your experiment. You will also see that the film is more grainier than expected for a 50 ASA film, this also gives some suspect in the direction that its mainly an overexposed 100 ASA Film.

I took this film for medium format a while ago. If poppy colors are desired it is quite well, despite the fact that you often get situations where you have to burn and dodge to get the contrast rage printed. Growing older I do prefer now more soft working films

I think exposing it to 64/80 ASA is an excellent idea.

The following Agfa ULRA series where (true) rated a 100 ASA, they probably changed the emulsion a bit, or got more honest

Regards from Germany,
Stefan

perkeleellinen · Apr 9, 2009

Thanks for the comments, Stefan. I also shot the above scene at ASA12 but that shot was very over exposed and curiously the saturation is slightly reduced (it also made the tomato turn slightly yellow and look like an apple).

stefan4u · Apr 9, 2009

High perkeleellinen!

Looking through my data sheets I have to revoke the rumor that it was “just” an overexposed 100 ASA Film, it’s indeed a somehow different animal:rolleyes:…

It does have an exceptional thick emulsion, 27 µm, a granularity of 4,3 (RMS) and a resolution of 50 Lines /mm at a contrast range by 1.6:1. It seems that they packed a lot of silver and color couplers in the emulsion; it’s thicker than a 200/400 or even 800ASA film. The color density graphs start to flatten / loosing linearity beginning at overexposure more than half a stop.

Proper exposing (still suggesting 64/80 ASA) and avoiding of heavy overexposure seems to be advisable. I have no idea at all, weather these data sheets are still available in your language, if you can read German I could email them to you…

Regards ,
Stefan

jd callow · Apr 9, 2009

I have shot many hundreds of rolls of this film. It is in my experience an iso 50 film and one of the very few films that does not benefit from shooting at less than the box speed. It has a very narrow exposure latitude and is easily blocked up. It is generally a good idea to treat it like a chrome -- bracket more toward underexposure and do it in thirds or halfs. It is a terrible film for mixed lighting, or as a night film and it is not so good for skin except where the model is perfect. With a polarizer it is a staggeringly dramatic film for autumn colours and clear blue skys. It is also an amazing film for flowers and or urban scenes where there are brightly painted facades and colourfully dressed pedestrians.

I really really love this film, it was my all time favourite. I'm sure Stefan is correct on the facts, but I'd hesitate about rating the film as high as 80, but wouldn't think twice about an ei of 64.

jd callow · Apr 9, 2009

On second thought, I'd use your results from the first roll and shoot your next roll biased toward the results you've had. Rate it at 80 or 100 and bracket toward 64 or 50 and see if the results are good. It sure isn't any slower than 50 and as long as you don't go over 100 I think you'll still be in very good shape and you'll know how to shoot the remaining rolls with confidence.

stefan4u · Apr 9, 2009

jd callow wrote: "With a polarizer it is a staggeringly dramatic film for autumn colours"

Hmmm, for that reason I fell once in love with it
(but later I was in heavy trouble enlarging negatives taken under bright Mediterranean sun) You are right, this film behaves like slide film concerning latitude and maybe 80 ASA is overestimated for normal light conditions, but not as bad if harsh contrast are present

Regards,
Stefan

jd callow · Apr 9, 2009

The film is not easy to print if the exposure is off or if the scene contrast is high. I had really good luck printing it on ilfocolour paper, but the paper was discontinued. I know I also printed it on Fuji and Kodak materials, but cannot remember the results for sure -- it seems to me that Fuji CA didn't work as well as the kodak, but can't be sure and I'm 3k miles from my prints.

I am a big fan of testing film for exposure based upon your own equipment and technique. An ei of 50-64 may work for me and 64-100 may do just as well for another. Perkeleellinen is certainly on the right path and his results seem to indicate the latter.

perkeleellinen · Apr 9, 2009

Stefan - I can read Swedish which gives me a little German. Do by all means send the data sheets and I'll see what I can get out of them (s.gascoigne@warwick.ac.uk).

In another scene I photographed I put red next to green and that is very interesting. The green shows a lot of detail but the red becomes just a blob of colour. The effect is quite striking at ASA50. This got me thinking of a possible photo project using this film. Here in England our telephone boxes and post boxes are a strong red, photographing these against a green background (say, in a rural location) would make a very interesting image I think. Not to everyone's taste, and maybe not even to my taste! But certainly striking.

perkeleellinen · Apr 9, 2009

jd callow - my contact print was printed on Kodak Endura. Interesting to know about how it prints as later in the year I'll start colour printing myself.

fatmoon · Apr 9, 2009

wow! I miss this stuff! I used to treat is as the print version of Velvia for its REALLY poppy color. It enlarged soooo well also. I never really liked color print film in general but this emulsion was great for certain things. I actually found a roll of it im about to shoot that i had stashed in my closet! long expired....but we'll see what happens!
Cheers!

pentaxuser · Apr 9, 2009

Just my curiosity and possibly ignorance of what was done here but as I understand it Ultra 50 was exposed at EI 25 then box speed then EI100. If I have got that correct then unless my eyes deceive me then pic exposed at EI 100 is miles better than 25 or 50 so why not expose at EI 100? What's the perceived benefit of lowering it to say 80 which most seem to suggest? Wouldn't the definition in the red box just be slightly worse with no countervailing improvement in any other aspect?

pentaxuser

jd callow · Apr 9, 2009

pentaxuser
All good points and I tended to agree although my experience indicated otherwise.

tim elder · Apr 9, 2009

To the original poster, one thing you might want to try is making prints of this negative to compare the Normal to the -1 once printed. That might be a waste of time if you're not intending to optically print any final results.

Only other thing I might want to add is I find that red, particularly the heavier and brighter reds, tend to reflect a lot of light and are very easy to overexpose on color negative film using a reflective meter. How does the film react to other primary colors?

I must admit that the only roll of Ultra I ever shot was used exactly as jdcallow recommended against - night scenes, mixed lighting, even a few portraits taken under mixed lighting! I never did try to print the film myself but the prints from the photo lab looked mediocre and didn't encourage further experimentation.

Tim

nickandre · Apr 9, 2009

Looks cool. If it was still made I'd try it, but for now I'll stick with Ektar.

perkeleellinen · Apr 10, 2009

Pentaxuser - EI100 looks considerably more grainy than EI50 on my scan. I thought EI80 or so would be a good compromise. Now I must say that my intention here is to print the negs myself but at the moment I'm still converting my darkroom to colour, hence the scan here and the contact print from Spectrum.

tim elder - I will optically print this film. Regarding other primary colours, they show more detail, I think what you're saying about red overexposing is what we see at ASA50 & ASA25. In my post above about a possible project for this film I considered exploiting this effect.

Getting the optical contact print done was a God-send. Without it a minilab print from a digi scan or my own digi scan would have rendered this film looking quite normal. I had to put in some work to make those scans resemble the optical print.

perkeleellinen · Apr 10, 2009

Here is a scan of the contact print showing ASA50 - ASA25 - ASA12 - ASA100:

L Gebhardt · Apr 10, 2009

I would guess that the correct exposure is frame 14, though 17 also looks good. Go and bracket around 64 or 80 and see which works best for you. Your choice of subject for this test makes it hard to really see how it responds to anything other than reds and yellows. If you have a color checker include that next time in a bracketed sequence.

perkeleellinen · Apr 10, 2009

I agree that this isn't the best of tests, but it was the only scene I shot where I also bracketed for ASA100. I was sure the film would have lost speed and so I went down to ASA12 rather than up. The second half of the film is just some snaps shot at ASA50 and in all those shots whenever red is present it glows, the other colours, although vivid, don't respond in the same way.

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