Agfa have being producing colour transparency film since 1930s. Their first of these was Agfacolor Neu.
It wasn’t until the 1982 when Agfa started making E6 chemistry based colour reversal film or slide film. The first of these was the Agfachrome CT100 and CT200. This of course was superseded by the Agfa Precisa brand eventual in 1999. Numerous improvements were made over the years to the CT100 recipe resulting in release of CT100i and the CT100x.
But let’s concentrate for moment, on the original CT100. Agfa made this film not to compete with the likes of Fuji’s Velvia and Provia and Kodak’s Ektachrome. It was squarely aimed at the consumer end of the market. Sold mainly in single packs sometimes double but rarely more than this. It was certainly cheaper than Fuji and Kodak’s offering at the time.
Kodachrome was popular too but require quite a longer wait time to develop. As Kodachrome was based on K14 chemical process exclusive to Kodak. It was complex and only larger labs could process the film. Kodak originally created the first of these E type processes in 1940’s. Mainly that small labs and professionals would be able to develop their own films. Fuji and Agfa made the own processes which was largely identical to the E-6 process.
Diapositives aka Dia’s
At this time, ‘dias’ from diapositives, as there known in Germanic speaking countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland were extremely popular throughout the 90’s into 2000s. Even today here in Austria folks still have their slides stored away in their basements. Just search on ebay.de or willhaben.at and you find a heap of stuff such dia film, dia projector and dia slides.
Agfa being a German brand meant the expired Agfa slide film can be found quite easily in Europe. That’s why I ended up have this film, my film had well expired in 1988.
What about projecting your photography with reversal film ?
Cross Processing
Cross-processing (also known as ‘x-pro’) is the procedure of deliberately processing one type of film in a chemical solution intended for another type of film. As particular chemical solutions are optimized for specific kinds of film, you will get unpredictable and interesting results when they are combined differently.
Images
Resources
Kosmos Film Afga Slide Film
Ateliers Marinette
The Banality of Color