Agfacolor CT 200

Agfacolor CT 200 was the film that ended Agfa's proprietary reversal chemistry. Production ran 1982 to 1992, and the box marks it as the first Agfa slide film designed for AP-44, the process effectively cross-licensed with Kodak's E-6. Before CT 200, Agfa shooters needed AP-41 labs. After CT 200, an Agfachrome cassette went into the same processor as Ektachrome. That change mattered more than the spec sheet.

The character sits between consumer Ektachrome and the older Agfachrome CT 18 it replaced. Slightly cooler than the Kodak equivalent, less saturated than Fujichrome 100 of the same years, with the restrained reds and clean blues Agfa's coupler chemistry had been producing since CT 18. Skin tones land neutral. Greens lean olive. Skies hold clean without going cartoon cyan.

Grain is moderate cubic-crystal, not the tabular architectures that arrived in the 1990s. At ISO 200 in 35mm projected on a screen the grain is visible but not distracting. It reads as 1980s rather than modern. The CT Precisa 200 that replaced it in 1999 had a finer-grain reformulation and stronger saturation.

The practical comparison is Ektachrome 200 of the same decade and Kodachrome 64 a stop slower. Ektachrome was punchier with wider distribution. Kodachrome required the disappearing K-14 process. CT 200 sat in the middle: easy to process, honest in color, on any European drugstore counter into the early 1990s.

Thirty-five millimeter only. No 120, no sheets. Production wound down in 1992 as Agfa folded the consumer slide line into the CT 100i and later CT Precisa branches, while the professional reversal portfolio went to the RS and RSX series. What exists now is expired cassettes from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rate at 100 or 125 if storage history is unknown.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 5-second exposure becomes about 7 seconds at the negative. Past a minute the color crossover on aged stock dominates the math, so for any long exposure on freezer-find CT 200, bracket and accept that the color may be the story rather than the subject.