A NEW (as of 2022) ISO 200 COLOR NEGATIVE FILM FROM ADOX

[Mick Fagan]

foc, thanks for the link to meinfilmlab, very interesting.

One point they mention is that the film is specified as 200 ASA, but it's full potential is realised at 100 ASA. While this could be shutter variations or aperture variations in the camera(s) they used, it could be possible that the film is closer to 100 ASA than 200 ASA in actuality. Bit of a moot point, but if you wish for tightness of grain, rating the film at a lower ASA setting may give you that.

I also wonder how many colour layers it has, they mention it works well under artificial light.

 

[Lachlan Young]

One point they mention is that the film is specified as 200 ASA, but it's full potential is realised at 100 ASA.

Anything being drawn in that regard from minilab scanning should be regarded sceptically - especially as the metering methodology used at time of exposure is not disclosed.

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

I have absolutely no involvement with color film any more. This project will do nothing for me, since my film photography is 100% black and white. Color is "owned" by digital today.

ADOX would, in my opinion, better apply its resources toward returning MCC-110 to production (with a surface finish like the one found on Bergger semi-glossy) as well as bringing to market a regularly available 400-speed sheet film to fill the gap left by always-out-of-stock Bergger Pancro 400.

Thanks for the input. Please allow me to drive a bit off for an intro. I will get to your point later on.

As soon as we announced Color Mission there were questions again about 120 film. I have said this before and I think it does not hurt to say it again but manufacturing silver halide materials is very complex all along the line. There is a lot of science in emulsion manufacturing, coating and finishing. We have built teams by now responsible for each step of the manufacturing process.
Their skills are only with large limitations substitutionable. In other words, we cannot have the emulsion chemists repair the 120 spooling machine and the technicians involved there cannot be withdrawn to coat film. This is why we sometimes seem to progress in areas which are perceived not as important as others. I agree that putting out b&w 120 film now is more important than a possible color film in 4 years. But we are stuck with the spooling machine and we are still looking for mechatronics btw.
In respect to PW we are done with most R&D and technically ready to produce. However papers have not taken the route of film. Their prices are still unrealistically low with paper production capacities exceeding demand by far and the industry is stuck in the old price-trap which has ruined it over the past 20 years. We are technically cabaple of manufacturing Polywarmtone but economically we are not. Or in other words (again): The cost per sqm of producing Polywarmtone on our scale will exceed the acceptable market price.
In Color Film this is different now since two years and this is why R&D capacities will be shifted there. A miracle has happened in our industry. After 25 years of running down the infrastructures it has become financially sustainable to engineer a new product and recover engineering from sales. It took me a while to get this in my brain and I am still a bit sceptical ;-)
This does not mean we will not release Polywarmtone but we are ready to manufacture it in boutique quantities at boutique prices for now.
In the future this will change when either paper prices become more realistic in respect to their production costs or if we become more productive with upgrades in our machinery.

Mirko

 

[Steve@f8]

Slightly tangential, but if Adox were to start up Color* Implosion again I’d purchase in a flash!

* colour

 

[mshchem]

Incremental and sustainable is the way to go.

 

[Kino]

Mirko,

Thank you for your continuing engagement with the photographic community and your willingness to explain the current situation.

Speaking personally, I am having to readjust my expectations for the ongoing realities of purchasing and using film in this day and age.

I think we have been, for lack of a better word, "Spoiled" by past scales of economy and facing up to the boutique status of ongoing film production will take some getting used to.

Please continue your excellent work and don't let the frustrations expressed deter your efforts.

 

[flavio81]

foc, thanks for the link to meinfilmlab, very interesting.

One point they mention is that the film is specified as 200 ASA, but it's full potential is realised at 100 ASA. While this could be shutter variations or aperture variations in the camera(s) they used, it could be possible that the film is closer to 100 ASA than 200 ASA in actuality. Bit of a moot point, but if you wish for tightness of grain, rating the film at a lower ASA setting may give you that.

Many C41 films look better when overexposed.

fI also wonder how many colour layers it has, they mention it works well under artificial light.

Yes a sample image there shows it works great under fluorescent lights. This isn't necessarily achieved by using an additional color layer. AGFA achieved that using regular 3 layers in the past with their "Vista" films. If i recall correctly it was essentially all abour doing better, more accurate sensitization. You don't really need a 4th layer.

I am really impressed on how good the colors look for what's supposed to be a "beta test" film. I was expecting "color implosion" colors, but this "Color Mission" film already has better colors than Colorplus 200! And yes, the test under fluorescent light was very telling. Not many C41 films would behave well under such conditions.

 

[flavio81]

In Color Film this is different now since two years and this is why R&D capacities will be shifted there. A miracle has happened in our industry. After 25 years of running down the infrastructures it has become financially sustainable to engineer a new product and recover engineering from sales. It took me a while to get this in my brain and I am still a bit sceptical ;-)

Mirko for president!!

This is a bright future ahead!!

 

[AgX]

This isn't necessarily achieved by using an additional color layer. AGFA achieved that using regular 3 layers in the past with their "Vista" films.

At the Vista films Agfa used multiple layers per color.

 

[Mick Fagan]

Flavio, quite some time ago I was shooting indoor industrial situations and as it was invariably mixed lighting with at the time common sodium lights mixed with Tungsten not to mention good old fluorescent nearly always in there as well, shooting transparency film was impossible.

Almost always we used colour negative film for these situations, then exposed in the darkroom to Kodak Color Print film, then a C41 process to end up with a nearly (sometimes spot on) correct colour transparency. The colour transparency was needed for 4 colour printing of magazines and advertising brochures and at the time this was arguably the best way to get the required end product looking good; the magazine or advertising material that is.

We tried a few times to utulise very high end colour scanners going straight from a camera exposed colour negative to 4 colour separation printing plates, it just wasn't quite good enough.

Around that time Fuji released their Reala four layer C41 negative film, I had use of it in my country within a couple of weeks of the Japanese release. More or less it was a revelation, the colour fidelity under mixed lighting was unbelievable; just what we needed. We were able to go straight from a camera negative to a Chromacon scanner, which to put into perspective, the complete system cost our company close to $1,000,000.00 for each unit.

As for multiple layers, I think the three colour negative manufacturers, Agfa, Kodak and Fuji all had multi layer C41 technology, some of which went to market. Kodak had a duplication colour film, neither Agfa nor Fuji had one. Kodak's duplication film was three layers of different colour, with each layer having three layers for a total of nine layers. This was explained to me by a visiting (from the USA) Kodak scientist.

So you could be correct about Agfa doing with three layers, what Fuji did with four layers. That said, Fuji's Reala film was a turning point in C41 film and was demonstrably better in mixed lighting situations; they were streets ahead of the other two at the time.

We were a Kodak house, virtually nothing else was allowed or used officially. Fuji Reala was a notable exception.

 

[flavio81]

At the Vista films Agfa used multiple layers per color.

Sorry, what i mean is that the Vista film only had layers for three primary colors, not for four colors like Fuji did.

You're correct that each color will have more than one layer.

Sorry for my bad explanation.

 

[adamlugi]

Is there a big difference technologically in producing negative film vs positive film.
I think if you can dream of expanding your offerings in the future to include slide?

 

[Donald Qualls]

Is there a big difference technologically in producing negative film vs positive film.

As I understand it, there's a reformulation required (=> multiple test coating runs, multiple formula tweaks) just to put the "same" emulsion that already works on 35 mm onto 120 base. Switching dye couplers for correct color in CD-3, eliminating base tint and masking, etc. would be a much larger project. Let's wait to have one known working C-41 film in production before thinking too hard about jumping into E-6.

 

[radiant]

I believe the process takes as long as ADOX says it will.

But what is the most time consuming part of the process? Four years is a very long time. It must be very very complicated thing, but I'm interested what actually causes such time span.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Four years is a very long time. It must be very very complicated thing, but I'm interested what actually causes such time span.

I would hazard a guess that four years is probably the time needed for the current stock of the new film to sell in the current market condition.

 

[Donald Qualls]

But what is the most time consuming part of the process? Four years is a very long time. It must be very very complicated thing, but I'm interested what actually causes such time span.

From what we've seen from the Adox account here (not sure if that's Mirko or someone else within the company) I'd infer that this is the time required to develop the emulsion from "start over for a different coating line and base" through multiple test coatings to reach the point of producing a ready-to-sell product. It might be a longer time than Kodak in their heyday would have needed, or it might not -- but Kodak in their golden era had multiple future-oriented projects running, parallel development that required the resources of a monopolistic titan. Which Fotoimpex/Adox most certainly is not.

 

[radiant]

From what we've seen from the Adox account here (not sure if that's Mirko or someone else within the company) I'd infer that this is the time required to develop the emulsion from "start over for a different coating line and base" through multiple test coatings to reach the point of producing a ready-to-sell product.

Yes I undestood that too. But what is the time consuming part of the process?

I would hazard a guess that four years is probably the time needed for the current stock of the new film to sell in the current market condition.

That is just evi

 

[pentaxuser]

I would hazard a guess that four years is probably the time needed for the current stock of the new film to sell in the current market condition.

I have to say this sounds a little cynical in the way you have expressed it in the above quote. So if the new film's development goes better than its estimated 4 years to reach fruition, ADOX will delay its release until it has sold all its Colour Mission 200? However you might mean that Adox has mentioned 4 years because it hopes that at the current expected sales it has probably around 4 years of demand for Colour Mission 200 which it hopes will be enough time to develop the new film?

If it is the second explanation then that is a reasonable basis on which ADOX can proceed and is not cynical.

pentaxuser

 

[Donald Qualls]

But what is the time consuming part of the process?

Each step is time consuming. I'm not a color expert by any stretch (and PE is gone), but I understand there's a great deal of testing in getting correct colors in each layer, correct speed in each layer, correct filtration by the yellow filter layer, and getting all the stuff you don't want to remain in the processed film to wash out in processing. Remember, you have three (or more) color layers that need to have different speeds but develop in (almost) the same time -- in fact, the layers get slightly different development because the developer takes some time to travel from the emulsion surface down to the lowest color layer. You then need to incorporate dye stabilizers (since C-41 process doesn't use a formalin stabilizer any more, since around 2000), etc. And you need all of this to coat onto the film consistently and at rather high speed, plus the "inert" interlayers have to go in correctly -- just getting the machinery tuned is probably takes months or longer, and formulating the emulsion layers has to be done concurrently with tuning the coating machinery, since coating rate and thickness affects color.

I'd liken it to trying to balance an egg on a pencil point held in your teeth -- except it's harder than that, and once you get it on balance, you need to keep it that way for years...

 

[MattKing]

The four year estimate may be revenue related - ADOX is depending on the sale of existing product to generate the R&D money.
It also may reflect current supply chain realities. I've been advised that even Eastman Kodak is having no end of trouble getting the things they need, including mundane things like film boxes and cans and ......

 

[ADOX Fotoimpex]

The four year estimate may be revenue related - ADOX is depending on the sale of existing product to generate the R&D money.
It also may reflect current supply chain realities. I've been advised that even Eastman Kodak is having no end of trouble getting the things they need, including mundane things like film boxes and cans and ......

We are also struck by these supply chain issues. We actually designed a nice box for Color Mission and the film should have come fully packaed. However these boxes are delayed until April. The reason for the launch in February (still with stickers) is that we have a slow time in sales in this period and we did not want to overstress Fotoimpex´s distribution capacities around German Easter hollidays. Therefore we waited until the christmas sales and afterservices had slowed down, with the launch. This enables us to do such a launch without any noticeably delays for our regular and new customers. However we have not expected success to this extend. We based our projections on sales of other films in a comparable price range. The 4 year time period is ofcourse R&D related. Judging by up to date sales data stocks of Color Mission will not last as long as expected. The upside is we have more cash in hand now which might slightly speed up things. But as the main factor is HR this cannot be speeded up by a lot due to training periods.

 

[Horatio]

Good news, indeed, and apparently selling well: I clicked the Photoimpex link and they are out of stock, as of today.

 

[toulcaz31]

Good news, indeed, and apparently selling well: I clicked the Photoimpex link and they are out of stock, as of today.

It seems a lot of people are not aware that although it shows as out of stock, it has been possible to place orders (pre-orders basically). I got 35 rolls that way few weeks ago (group buying with some friends).

 

[brbo]

It seems a lot of people are not aware that although it shows as out of stock, it has been possible to place orders (pre-orders basically).

How?!

 

[toulcaz31]

How?!

When I placed my order on Feb 27 at Fotoimpex, it was showing as out of stock but you could still add the product to your cart on Fotoimpex.
I am looking at it right now; it seems they even removed the option to add to cart. It's pretty confusing I must say...