SamuliSchielke
I’ve just developed my first three rolls of ADOX CMS 20, which I shot on a hiking trip through Finland and Norway. I have to (can, would like to, want to) say that I’m very impressed with this film. Instead of my usual compact camera (weight really does count when you’re also carrying a tent and food for a week), I took my considerably heavier A-1 with my best 35mm lens (Canon FD 1.4/50) on the trip, hoping it would be worth it. It was worth it.
I find the film particularly well-suited to travel and landscape photography: no need to lug around a heavy medium-format camera, endless resolution, beautiful tonality, and plenty of headroom in the highlights (glaciers and clouds backlit are still beautifully rendered, even though I routinely exposed for the shadows). What’s more, landscape shots taken at f/2 to f/4.5 have a lovely, dramatic sense of depth.
I must admit that I read the glowing reviews of this film with some scepticism, but it really does deliver on its promises. I haven’t yet been able to determine just how high its resolution really is, because at some point my enlarger lens reached its limits, and the enlarger head couldn’t be raised any higher either...
What is certainly true, as I unfortunately discovered, is that you mustn’t load the film in a room that is too bright. The first three frames show significant overexposure (which, apparently via the perforations, also affected a few frames directly below them on the roll), which was unfortunately unavoidable as I didn’t have a changing bag with me in the fjells, and there weren’t exactly plenty of dark places there either...
However, the film really does not seem to have any headroom. I exposed at 25 ISO and developed for 6:30 mins at 20 degrees as specified, and the film really couldn’t be any thinner. This just about works at a gradient of 2.5 or 3, depending on the subject contrast. But many of the fixed-grade papers I have have a gradient of 2, either because that’s how they’re designed, or because they’re a bit older and no longer quite at grade 3. The question now is whether you can develop the film a bit longer = steeper without compromising image quality?
Thanks for an exceptional film!
Samuli
