Agfa RSX II definitely gone

[tim atherton]

This is the official word from Agfa headquarters on RSX II tramsparecny film:

"Production of Agfachrome RSX in sheet film has now been discontinued. 8" x 10" and 4" x 5" (50 sheets) are no longer available, We recently made the last ever production of 4" x 5" (10 sheets)and that stock should continue to be available for some months. Once it has gone, there will be no more.

Kind Regards,

Pierre Muller"

[Todd West]

Wow, you actually managed to pry an answer out of Agfa somehow. I'm impressed... what's the secret?

[Martin Patek-Strutsky]

It was an excellent film if you had to handle high contrasts and dislike oversaturated colors. What is about Astia 100F? Could it be an adequate substitute?

BTW, does this mean that Agfa has left the LF market completely? If they discontinue their bread and butter slide film without announcing a successor one could think so...

[tim atherton]

"BTW, does this mean that Agfa has left the LF market completely? If they discontinue their bread and butter slide film without announcing a successor one could think so..."

I think they have already discontinued APX100 in 8x10 and I had heard rumours it would be gone in 4x5 soon as well - so yes, it looks like it.

[John Kasaian]

Gosh! Agfa makes Kodak look like the LF "Poppa Bear" LOL! Maybe with Agfa out of the picture, the Great Yellow Father in Rochester will corner the market on color sheet film, provide job security for it's employees, make a nice dividend for the widows & orphans who hold shares, and lower the price so some of us can actually afford to try color!;-)

[James Driscoll]

Apparently they discontinued APX 100 in 4x5 also.

I am curious to know if they discontinued Scala in 4x5 too???

[tim atherton]

"I am curious to know if they discontinued Scala in 4x5 too???"

That's one thing I've never heard a whisper about - odd in a way, as it is such a small niche product with limited processing facilities you would think in some ways it would be one of the first to go?

Maybe some fashion photographer is keeping it going single handed... :-)

[David A. Goldfarb]

On the other hand, maybe the desire to get the most out of those proprietary processing facilities is what keeps it going, the only competition being T-Max reversal and dr5.

[Todd West]

What about Astia 100F? Could it be an adequate substitute?





I've switched to Astia 100F since I ran out of RSX II last spring and was unable to find any more RSX. Astia 100F behaves very similarly to RSX II, but has a tighter knee at the high density end of the curve which results in slighly higher contrast and noticeably nicer looking shadow detail on the light box. As you'd expect from a portrait film, Astia 100F is slightly warmer than RSX and has richer browns, but is almost as neutral as RSX. I can't see any difference in grain between Astia 100F (RMS 7) and RSX II (RMS 10) in Heidelberg Tango/Durst Lambda 20x24 prints but it is noticeable under the loupe if you're looking for it. 100F costs about 50% more than RSX did, but at least there are boxes and boxes of it readily available here in the US, whereas RSX sheet film was always difficult to find.





In short, I'm happy with Astia 100F and don't miss RSX II at all.

[tim o'brien]

> > Dear Tim,

> >

> > Thank you for contacting Agfa Consumer Imaging. Agfa has discontinued the

> > production of all Agfapan and Agfachrome sheet products. Both films will

> > continue to be available in 120 and 35mm rolls.

> >

> > Agfapan APX in 9 X 12 sheets is not available in the United States.

> > > >

> > Sincerely,

> > John Auer

> > Agfa Consumer Imaging

> >

[Guy Tal]

I'll second Todd's impression of Astia 100F. I started using it recently and tested RSX-II in the past. Astia handles high contrast well and maintains an impressive amount of shadow detail. Having worked with Tango scans of both RSX-II and Astia 100F I can definitely see a difference in grain - scanned at 2000dpi grain is very much evident in the Agfa, and much less so in the Fuji.

Guy
http://scenicwild.com