Agfacolor was a series of color film products made by Agfa of Germany. The first Agfacolor, introduced in 1932, was a film-based version of their Agfa-Farbenplatte (Agfa color plate),[1] a "screen plate" product similar to the French Autochrome. In late 1936, Agfa introduced Agfacolor Neu (New Agfacolor), a pioneering color film of the general type still in use today.[2] The new Agfacolor was originally a reversal film used for making "slides", home movies and short documentaries. By 1939, it had also been adapted into a negative film and a print film for use by the German motion picture industry. After World War II, the Agfacolor brand was applied to several varieties of color negative film for still photography, in which the negatives were used to make color prints on paper. The reversal film was then marketed as Agfachrome. These films use Color Developing Agent 1 in their color developer.[3]
History
Development
Agfa was formed in 1867, and part of IG Farben from 1925 to 1945. Its Wolfen plant, which was the sole producer of Agfacolor film until the end of World War II, was constructed in 1909.
Legacy of World War II
Towards the end of World War II, large quantities of raw Agfacolor stock were seized by the Soviet Union and served as the basis for the Sovcolor process,[4] which was widely used in the USSR and other Eastern bloc nations;[5] such films produced in Poland were also described as Polcolor, the first being Adventure at Marienstadt (1954).[6]
Works cited
Further reading
- Coe Brian, Colour Photography: The First Hundred Years 1840–1940, Ash & Grant, 1978
- Gert & Nina Koshofer, Dr. Rolf Giesen, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden, 2005
- www.pixpast.com a source for collectors of original 35mm and 16mm agfacolor film from 1936 to 1945.
External links
- Color photo report from car journey to Paris, Monaco and Rome made in 1938 using Agfacolor process by Polish racing driver Witold Rychter from Warsaw.
- Agfacolor on Timeline of Historical Film Colors with many written resources and many photographs of Agfacolor prints.
References
- The glass-based Agfa color plate was announced in 1916, but because of World War I and its aftermath, the product was not properly introduced until the early 1920s.^
- Based upon the patent no. 253335 of Dr. Rudolf Fischer, 1911, Berlin^
- Ann Fenech. Lifetime of Colour Photographs in Mixed Archival Collections University College London^