Agfacolor XR 400

XR 400 was the fast end of Agfa's mid-1980s consumer color line, sitting above XR 200 in the same family and below the XRS 400 professional tier. It was Agfa's answer to Kodacolor VR 400 and Fujicolor HR 400, the two stocks it shared European shelf space with through the second half of the 1980s. ISO 400 was the default for indoor flash and overcast outdoor work before zoom point-and-shoots pushed everyone toward 800.

The character of XR 400 is recognizably Agfa: cooler than Kodak, less saturated than Fuji, greens that lean olive rather than the emerald of Fujicolor HR. Skin tones land neutral to slightly cool, which European wedding labs corrected back warm in print some of the time and left alone for a documentary look the rest of the time, depending on what the photographer was after that session. Grain is heavier than XR 200, and the dye stack runs thinner than Kodak's, so scans pull flat and need a contrast curve in post.

Latitude is where XR 400 lost ground. Roughly minus one to plus two stops gets usable negatives, narrower than VR 400 or HR 400 of the same period. Bracketing helps. Rating down a third of a stop to 320 gives cleaner shadows in mixed light.

The XR 400 cassettes carried DX coding through the late 1980s, a real selling point when point-and-shoots had just started reading cartridge speed automatically. Format was 35mm only. The XRS 400 professional version came in 35mm and 120.

Agfa rebranded the consumer color line as Optima in 1996 and the XR label disappeared. The AgfaPhoto consumer division spun off in 2004 and collapsed in May 2005. What exists today is freezer stock. Rate expired XR 400 at 200 or 160 depending on storage.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 4-second exposure becomes about 6 seconds at the negative; a 30-second reading climbs to roughly 60. Color crossover past about thirty seconds is severe, with shadows going magenta and highlights warming, so for night work the bracket sequence matters more than the math.