35mm film review: Agfa Vista 200

I have noticed that my preferred simulation of the film on digital shots for this autumn became Agfa Vista. So while having some free time I decided to purchase a real roll of Agfa Vista film and shoot it to see if the simulation looks similar and in general - to better understand 35mm film world. I had some experience with 35mm film 6 months ago but I did not like the film shots that much back then, so I decided to give it a second try. Little did I know that this will become a long journey to the film world for me...

So I have purchased Agfa Vista, visited my friend- old school photographer and borrowed his Olympus OM-1n with 85mm F2.0, loaded the film and started looking for my friends to take pictures of them for my blog. Yes, this is correct - I hate taking pictures of animals, buildings, strangers, cars, nature and so on. I am a fine art wedding photographer first of all so I adore portraits, people, natural expressions etc. I saw hundreds of similar tests for Agfa Vista, but they did not focus on people - this is why I decided to investigate this film myself. My aim was to see how this particular film captures the skin tones of people.

The lab that developed and scanned the film for me did not do any tweaking in colours, maximum what they did - corrected the exposure slightly. So I am to show you raw scanned footage and on the bottom of the page you will find some more technical information about this test as well as my general opinion about the film.

Enjoy!

Agfa Vista 200

Camera: Olympus OM-1n

Lens: 85mm F/2.0

Location: inside and outside, mostly cloudy weather

Challenges:

Hard to focus on manual lens (5-6 frames were out of focus)

ISO 200 - too dark for inside and cloudy weather

Expensive: €4,99(film) + €1 (development) + €10,80 (scan) = €16,78(around 30 good frames)

Personal opinion: Agfa Vista is a nice film. Would I stick to it - no, would I ever buy it again - probably yes, in summer time when there is more light. Does it look similar to those digital simulation of the film - I did not find it so. I think film has its own unique look. It is nice but I prefer more contrast and more colours. However, if I was to edit the shots in Lightroom - there could be more pleasant look in the output file which I would definitely prefer:

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