Adox CHS 25

[Luca Merlo]

Two years ago I bought 5 packs of 4x5 Adox CHS 25 film that are expiring next year. I am planning to us them next month in occasion of a trip in Northern France. Although I have experienced with the Adox 100, I do not have any idea about the response of this film to B&W filters when shooting outsdoors. Any idea how the two films compare under this respect ? Any idea about the actual speed of the Adox 25 ? How would you rate this film when developing it in Rodinal 1 + 50 ?

Best regards from Italy

[Ted Harris]

Luca,

AFAIK Adox 25 film (the CHS nomenclature is unfamiliar) and the same film that was labeled as efke for several years in North America is the classic Adox KB14 emulsion that has been in more or less continuous production for many decades. I was using it 40 years ago. I rated it then and rate it now at ISO 25 and have always developed it in Rodinal, sometimes 1:25 and sometimes 1:50, varying the development time with the dilution.

[Luca Merlo]

Thanks Ted. It is definitely the film that you have used. Do you remember as it was responding to the usage of filters when photographing landscape ?

Thanks

[Tim Curry]

For landscapes I would use a yellow filter, but this will cost a stop in exposure. If you don't use a yellow filter, blue skies will be white and without detail, very washed out. A yellow filter will help with clouds and blue sky and give you a good tonal scale. Use a good tripod if you have one and it will help when you run into slow shutter speeds with filters. An orange filter is as dark as you will ever want to go with this film (do not use a red filter!).

This film will be very different from the Adox 100 you have used (Efke, same film with a different box). It is much finer in grain and has a completely different tonal scale in the print. You might also try some for portraits without a filter, just to see how it works for skin tones. Reds will be darker and pale skin can look very interesting. tim

[Ted Harris]

Luca,

I use it for portraits in the studio every once in a while and do so without filters. I haven't used it for landscapes for years but when I did, I filtered it as normal. Yellow or orange filters or even red to accentuate clouds, green to bing out the patterns in leaves, etc.

[Chris Jones]

Luca,

I use it for portraits in the studio every once in a while and do so without filters. I haven't used it for landscapes for years but when I did, I filtered it as normal. Yellow or orange filters or even red to accentuate clouds, green to bing out the patterns in leaves, etc.

I have been using Efke/Adox 25 recently with a red filter (25A) outdoors during the brightest part of the day but when I attempted to say what this would mean in terms of tone found myself getting tongue tied and stuttering. Sure, foliage can be made very dark, and the long exposures give greater motion blur... but trying to say it in a simple prose sentence I found to be difficult.

Others may have more of an ability to explain the response of a film such as this to exposure through a red filter? I am rather taken with the results so far and almost as if the tonality has changed the colour of the print paper compared to say Delta 100.

Anyways it is getting too late here and I have been reading too much, already, Chris Jones.

(PS... I have been using a camera for forty years and have worked in the area but am now retired for health reasons so am free to play around within the limits of poor health.)

[Ole Tjugen]

The Efke 25 is prectically red-blind. So if you use a red filter you end up with a very narrow band of wavelengths that are recorded, and they are all in the orange-red range.

A "normal" film with the same filter would record the full range of reds, thus giving a completely different tone scale.

[false_Aesthetic]

Does anyone have examples of efke/adox 25 with no filter, orange filter and red filter? I'd be interested to see the differences.

[Charles Hohenstein]

It's also available in an ortho version.

[Andrea Gazzoni]

I have a doubt: how much is a 25 ASA film really usable in landscape photography?
I mean, will it always ask for ultra-long exposures and you'll end up using it only in bright sunlight?
thank you
Andre

[Ole Tjugen]

It is extremely useful, since it allows the use of relatively large apertures while still keeping the "shutter times" in the range that can be reliably done with a hat. :)

[Andrea Gazzoni]

Ole, are you saying my quasi-hairless head will chill in frozen alpine winter sunsets in order to use this film? ;)
Can anyone point to a link of for Adox 25 reciprocity failure?

[Ole Tjugen]

Just like my quasi-hairless head does get chilled - whenever I decide to use a barrel lens on formats larger than 4x5" (for 4x5" I use a Speed Graphic instead), or it's cold enough that I can't get aging shutters to work reliably.

Of course if your lenses are shuttered and the shutters are reliable, there should be no problem. One second at f:4.5 is quite a lot of light. Or you could do multiple exposures of one second each, and keep your hat on! :)

I have considered a second hat, but gave that up as just a little bit too stupid...

[Andrea Gazzoni]

...f 4.5 ? what's this?

;)

[Ole Tjugen]

There's nothing wrong with f:4.5!

http://www.bruraholo.no/bilder/POP2.jpg

[Glenn Thoreson]

Everyone is giving adviseon the Efke/Adox 25, but isn't the CHS 25 film a relatively new item? That would bear some checking. I seem to remember there is a difference.

[Rob_5419]

Since Efke/Adox's rebranding exercise, I've completely lost the plot with this film.

I thought there wa an Adox CMS20:

http://www.adox.de/english/ADOX_Films/ADOX_Films/ADOX_CMS_Films.html

but that's only in miniature peanut film sizes. So it can't be this film that the poster is referring to.

Most likely, it might be:

http://www.adox.de/english/ADOX_Films/ADOX_Films/ADOX_CHS_Films.html


The Adox 25, based on the old formulation of Efke 25, which was a direct silver poured layer single emulsion film, like the Adox 25 of the 1950's, was rebranded from Efke 25. It seems to me that Efke 25 was rebranded as 'Adox 25' and now Adox 25 has been rebranded Adox CMS 25! Essentially the same film, but rebranded several times just to confuse us all into thinking we have greater consumer power!

The website details a bit of the blurb, but I'm losing track of the Efke-Adox changes, just as badly as the Maco-Rollei film name shifts.

[Ole Tjugen]

I believe CHS is "Cubic Heterodisperse Single-layer", CMS is "Cubic Monodisperse Single-layer", and CHM is "Cubic Heterodisperse Multilayer".

So now you can guess what it is of they ever introduce a THM?

[Rob_5419]

Well, that's what the web link tells us CHS means.

Which to all intent and purposes, suggests that whatever Adox are calling their ISO25 emulsion nowadays, it has not changed at all since the 1950's.

Efke 25 = Adox 25 = Adox CHS 25.

Rodinal 1:50 is just fine.
Neofin Bleu works well too.

[Ted Harris]

A note that if you want details from "the horse's mouth" Mirko Bodeker, the CEO of Adox, will be at foto3 this summer.