Agfa Optima II 400

Optima II 400 is the second-generation Optima at the fast end of the family. The original Optima 400 ran through the mid 1990s; the II arrived after Agfa rolled out their Eye Vision color technology into the consumer line in 2000, with the Optima Prestige professional tier carrying it shortly after. The II badge signals an updated emulsion, not a wholly new product.

The headline difference from the first Optima 400 is grain. Agfa's SXM crystals, the Surface eXtended Multistructured family that also went into Vista and Futura II, sit at the core of the reformulation. At ISO 400 the result is a stock that grains finer than Vista 400 of the same era and reads closer to Fuji Superia 400 in cleanliness while keeping the Agfa palette. Reds stay warm without going orange, blues sit slightly cooler than Fuji, skin tones come back natural rather than flushed.

Compared with Kodak Portra 400NC from the same period, Optima II 400 runs a touch more saturated and gives up about a third of a stop of shadow latitude. Greens render honestly rather than the slightly cool shift you get on NC. For wedding and event work in mixed indoor light, the stock held a real audience in Europe through its production years; American shooters tended toward Portra or NPH.

Push to 800 cleanly in C-41 with a stop of overexposure baked into the meter reading. Pushing past that is possible but the grain coarsens visibly. Pull to 320 in shade gives the smoothest mid-tones the emulsion offers.

Available historically in 35mm and 120, with 220 in some regions. Production stopped in 2005 when AgfaPhoto entered insolvency. Surviving rolls run on eBay and through European film dealers. The 120 holds up better than the 35mm cassettes in cold storage, which is the usual story for any expired Agfa color stock.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second, so a metered 30-second exposure becomes about 60 seconds at the negative. On expired stock past ten seconds, add another half stop on top of the math.