Rollei RPX 400

This is not a proper review of Rollei’s RPX 400 black and white film. This is a grumbly review because while shooting this roll during my recent weekend in Mendocino, my Pentax Spotmatic decided to jam up on me. The film advance just stopped dead winding from one shot to the next. Grrrrr! I got about a dozen frames into the roll. Rather than tear up the sprocket holes, I rewound the film back into the canister and called it a day. Oddly enough, when I got back home and fiddled with the Spottie, everything seemed fine.

Rollei RPX 400 is a high speed black and white negative film that was recommend to me by fellow photographer Gregory Gross. It’s distributed by Maco (Hans O. Mahn GmbH & Co. KG, Maco Photo Products), a Germany-based supplier of photographic films and chemicals, licensing the Rollei brand name. The company says that Rollei RPX 400 is a new film that is based off of the original Agfa APX emulsion. Some digging revealed that this film is most likely made by Ilford. Whatever the truth, I loved the old Agfa APX 100 film and was anxious to try RPX 400 and the slower, finer grained RPX 100. I only wish my Spotmatic would have cooperated.

Here are the frames that were salvageable.

The shot below was a difficult one for the Spotmatic’s basic TTL meter. I was afraid if I metered for the shadows, the Pacific beyond would have just blown out or I would have lost the clouds entirely.

As I said up top, my review of this film is tainted because I get cranky when one of my old cameras lets me down in the field, especially when I’ve traveled so far to make photographs. But there is something interesting and a bit haunting about this emulsion that makes me want to try it again. I’m glad I have another roll of the 400 speed and two rolls of the 100 speed in the fridge. Next time I’ll pop the film into my trusty Nikon F and bring along a Minolta Autometer IV F that I just picked up my local camera shop. The meter came with attachments for incident, reflected and spot metering.