Rollei RPX 25 Film Review
Very Sharp, Very Fine, Excellent With Vintage Glass
10 min read by Dmitri.Published on .
Rollei RPX 25 is a silver-rich, sharp, fine-grained panchromatic black-and-white film that’s been one of my preferred stocks for Voigtländer Vitessa cameras (foldable rangefinders, made in the 1950s).
I’ve been shooting RPX 25 for six years, though not as much as I’d like. The film is relatively easy to find in 35mm and 120; it’s also available in bulk rolls and 4x5 sheets.
In this review, I’ll share all I’ve learned about RPX 25 over the years and why I think it may look so good with old lenses like the Voigtlander Ultron 2.0 or Zeiss Tessar 2.8.
In this review: What is Rollei RPX 25? Resolution and sharpness. Grain structure. Developing. Scanning. Dynamic range and contrast. Exposure, editing, and restoring highlights. More samples. Price and availability. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!
What is Rollei RPX 25?
You may recognize Rollei as a camera brand from their past masterpieces like the Rollei 35 S. But today’s owners of the Rollei brand don’t make film or film cameras — they do “rent” the Rollei brand name to other businesses. Some examples are the Rollei 35AF, made by MiNT, and the Rollei line of film marketed by Maco, a large photographic retailer in Germany.
It’s uncommon for businesses to reveal their suppliers, though several unconfirmed sources suggest that Maco gets some of the coated material for their Rollei series from Agfa-Gevaert — a functioning Agfa-branded factory that manufactures and sells aerial surveillance film as one of its products.
Adding to the confusion, many or most of the recent Agfa-branded films are not made by Agfa-Gevaert (rather, branded with a rented name). Agfa-Gevaert does not sell film to consumers.
But these are just curious facts and guesses. What really matters, of course, is the image quality and the experience of shooting and developing this film:
Resolution and sharpness.
Lower-ISO films are usually expected to have finer grain. Larger granules, used to capture dim light at high speeds, aren’t used in slow-speed films like the Rollei RPX 25. Thus, we are left with small particles that capture less light but can resolve finer detail.
Even though Rollei RPX 25 does not use the T-Grain technology (which may allow for even smaller grain), it’s extremely fine-grained. It’s comparable to Lomography Fantôme Kino 8 and Adox CMS 20 II (the latter is the highest-resolving photographic medium according to the manufacturer, which implies it’s beyond even the digital sensors’ abilities).
The datasheet for Rollei RPX 25 lists the diffuse granularity of this film as RMS 8, placing it amongst some of the smoothest emulsions available, such as Fujifilm Provia 100F (RMS 8), Fujifilm Velvia 50 (RMS 9), and Ektachrome E100 (RMS 8).
But, as Kodak writes in its documentation, RMS granularity isn’t reliable for measuring perceived film graininess. Indeed, Fujicolor Natura 1600 is rated at RMS 4 — but it’s a much grainier stock than any of the above. This is partially because film grains are not uniformly sized (which is why Natura and other films may look smooth in the highlights and chunky in the shadows).
Going back to visual comparisons, my scans show larger granules with RPX 25 than on Lomography Fantôme Kino 8 and Adox CMS 20 II. They even look chunkier than on colour slide films — but that does not stop this film from rendering exceptional detail and even greater sharpness.
Note how I used sharpness and detail separately. That’s because smaller grain does not necessarily yield a sharper image (it can produce more details, but without post-processing, those tiny particles may still look cloudy). Silver-rich grain like the one found in RPX 25 may render fewer details than a few other films, but still appear sharper due to high localized contrast (i.e., pronounced individual granules that make edges between dark and light shades appear as more defined).
Grain structure.
Your film’s grain appearance isn’t just influenced by the amount of light that falls onto the emulsion. How you develop, scan, print, and display your film can make a difference.
✪ Note: Grain structure observations are fairly subjective without a microscope and a controlled environment. Additionally, most scanners will not render distinguishable grain with films like Rollei RPX 25. If you post an image shot on this film on something like Instagram, there will be absolutely no trace of any kind of grain unless you crop heavily.
Rollei RPX 25 looks very good when developed with Rodinal and scanned in high resolution or printed large. Rodinal tends to produce sharper grain in most films, which goes hand in hand with RPX 25’s silver-rich structure, yielding images that look very crisp.
Classics like the Voigtländer Vitessa, which, for its time, had one of the best-resolving lenses but would have fallen behind after 68 years in storage, produce outstanding results with this combo. Crispy grain makes the images appear sharp corner-to-corner, whereas high silver content makes good scans playable for exposure corrections after the fact. All that without taking away from other lens characteristics that make those cameras special.
Developing.
Up until fairly recently, I had all my film developed at a local lab. They did a fantastic job while I scanned at home for better image quality and to save on costs.
The Lab uses Ilford DD-X to develop all their black-and-white film, which works well with RPX 25 — but not as well as Rodinal, in my opinion — which I discovered after I started developing at home.
✪ Note: RPX 25 should be pre-washed as the first 1-2 fills will yield a dark colour in the water that may contaminate your stop bath.
DD-X is a modern developer designed to “soften” the grain by eating at its edges, thus producing smoother-looking images. This may be desirable for grainy film or your applications in general, but for me, Rollei RPX 25 looks best when it’s sharp, and that appears to culminate with traditional developers, like Rodinal.
Image quality aside, RPX 25 dries flat (which is nice for scanning), with a clear, transparent base (great for developing this film as a positive). In larger formats, you may not be able to picture the grain, as is the case with 4x5 film, which one user reports to appear as detailed as anything shot with the much more expensive 8x10 cameras. Unfortunately, this film is quite thin (in all formats), which can make it a little challenging to handle unless you’re shooting 35mm.
Scanning.
RPX 25 makes the most sense with high-resolution scans made with hardware capable of imaging high DMax opacities. This film has high silver content, which means that the negatives can appear dense (high DMax). If your scanner can “see” through those opaque areas, you’ll have more details in the highlights to play with.
Rollei/Maco suggests that this film is easy to scan thanks to the clear base, which I think is only partially true. A clear base will make inverting negatives easier (unless you use film Q or histogram stretching, which works with all film densities), but it won’t help with the highlights that can disappear unless your scanner is capable of imaging high DMax/see through the dense areas.
In other words, Rollei RPX 25 can look exceptionally good when developed in Rodinal and scanned with a high-resolution/high DMax scanning setup (dedicated film scanner or a calibrated DSLR with a very good light), but it can also disappoint you if the scan quality is sub-par.
Dynamic range and contrast.
Along with finer grain, slow films tend to have a lower dynamic range. This means that there’s a high probability of getting completely black shadows or blown-out highlights in high-contrast scenes (i.e. bright sunlight + deep shadows). Rollei RPX 25 is not an exception.
The company does not measure or list film characteristic curves, so the exact DR isn’t known. However, it’s plain to see that this is a high-contrast/low DR film that needs to be exposed properly and developed correctly to avoid issues.
Exposure, editing, and restoring highlights.
However, the high-contrast nature of this film can be tamed in a good scan.
Some of the best results with Rollei RPX 25 came from slight overexposure and development with Rodinal using nine minutes in 1:25 dilution (I skipped the recommended 60 seconds of initial development for the typical 10 seconds every minute).
This produced dense negatives, shiny with silver. I was able to dial back significantly in Photoshop after scanning with Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED and inverting with film Q.
Thanks to this film’s high silver content and my scanner’s ability to “see” through it, a significant amount of detail is available for recovery from highlights without crushing the shadows. Pulling the curves down almost magically brings previously unseen parts of an image into view — and that from a 16-bit JPEG scan.
More samples.
Price and availability.
As of this writing (August 2025), Rollei RPX 25 costs around $10 in 35mm, $11 in medium format, $100 in a bulk roll of 100’, or $80 for 25 sheets of 4x5. This places it at the below-average price point (which is currently $13.33 for black-and-white and $16.17 for all films surveyed on Film Price Trends).
Though it’s not sold at every shop that stocks film, RPX 25 is generally available at specialty stores, particularly in roll formats. Bulk and sheet formats sell out the fastest.
❤ By the way: Please consider making your Rollei RPX 25 film purchase using this link so that this website may get a small percentage of that sale — at no extra charge for you — thanks!