Agfa APX 100: Found Film

A while back I wrote about the Olympus Pen F, a classic half-frame SLR from the late 1960s. My camera arrived with a roll of Agfa APX 100 inside it. APX is a black and white film that was discontinued in the mid-2000s. I put it to one side but it haunted me; I assumed it had been used to test out the camera and probably had nothing on it, but I have a load of developing fluid, so why not find out?

Found film is big business, viz the Vivian Maier industry, whereby a bunch of people who never met her or helped her in any way fight over ownership of her negatives, which they bought in an auction. Maier was a fantastic photographer who lived just long enough to see her life's work taken from her; now a bunch of businessmen squabble over her work while it still has value.

The cat is dreaming that some men on bicycles are cycling to deliver food. Like knights in shining armour, with boxes of sandwiches; the leading cyclists are smoothing the trail. "Hurry", thinks the cat. I've shot some APX 25, a slower and less grainier version of the same film, and they have a similar look - the blacks are clipped. I suppose Fuji Acros is the nearest modern equivalent.

The wild hunt coursed through the sky, pulling us along in its wake. Daring the anti-aircraft batteries to open fire, but radar did not see them; with hearts older than radio waves we felt their passing, and the hot blood, and we took the reins and plunged on. Into a century of corrections, one after the other.

Fuji Velvia: 2007

In the previous post I shot some long-expired rolls of Kodak Ektachrome 64, a venerable slide film that was discontinued a few years ago. For this post I tried out some rolls of Fuji Velvia RVP which expired back in 2007, the same year that Gordon Brown achieved his lifelong political dream of becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Would the US sub-prime crisis affect Northern Rock, at that time the UK's eighth-largest bank? Who could tell. In February of 2007 the FTSE 100 hit a six-year high of 6,383; it continued to rise for a few months, but it was another six years before it reached 6,383 again, by which time Gordon Brown was long-gone.

The FTSE currently stands at 6,740, ninety points higher than its previous all-time peak, which was reached on the last trading day of 1999. Of course, if you had invested wisely and widely you would have made money from dividends; but that's boring. You got a thrill from watching the numbers go up. Back in 1998, if you had borrowed half a million pounds and invested that money in Cisco, the numbers would have gone up very rapidly. The numbers would be very high even if you paid back the loan, but why not get a second, even bigger loan? Provided you sold up before the inevitable correction, you would be quids in.

I know what you're thinking. Either the viewfinder is off, or my right leg is shorter than my left. The fact is that I align my body in accordance with the Earth's magnetic field, which is perturbed by the gravitational pull of Jupiter, which just so happened to be above me and to the right.

Velvia was notorious in its day for going off quickly. It tended to develop a red cast. I have no idea how mine was stored; the colours seem to be more or less accurate within the heightened context of Velvia. The image of Bob Dylan looks more purple than the original, and is well within the ability of Photoshop to correct. Even though I exposed at ISO 50 and leaned lightwards, the film was very dark. Like Salo or When the Wind Blows, that kind of dark.