ADOX CHS 100 II is back in 35mm!

JPD · Aug 25, 2020

Team ADOX said:
Thanks for the suggestion.
There are several reasons for the name CHS 100 II (beside the technical description):
1. The market exit of Fotokemika in 2012 came quite surprising at that time. Resulting in loosing our manufacturing source of the ADOX CHS line of films. We had to react as fast as possible, because lots of loyal CHS customers wanted a solution for their future needs. And the spectral sensitivity of the CHS films was the unique characteristic of the CHS 50 and 100 which was liked by our customers most. Therefore our intention was to design a successor for CHS 50 and 100 (CHS 100 II works excellently at EI 50/18° as well) with the same spectral sensitivity, but significant improvements in detail rendition (sharpness, resolution, grain, shape of the characteristic curve) and in production quality / QC (Made in Germany).
The name CHS 100 II was intended as a clear signal to our CHS 50 and 100 customers that we have a solution for their needs.
2. The CHS 100 II was not intended to be "the only one medium speed BW ADOX film forever" from ADOX. There are more options and plans for the long-term future. Including using different technology. And therefore also some potential product names were / are not "free" or possible for the new CHS-type film.

The name CHS 100 II for this film is meanwhile very well established for many years. Changing the film name now after all these years would lead to lots of confusion in the market and under customers, and to significant additional costs for ADOX. All that would be counterproductive for the future success of this product. It would have negative impacts on both our customers and our company.

ADOX - Innovation in Analog Photography.

Thank you for taking the time to reply! Yes, it would cause some confusion, like the Adonal vs. Rodinal one, and probably add to the confusion over "rebadged films". Some get the feeling that rebadging/renaming makes that product "inferior", even though the products are the same. Adox CHS 100 II is one of the best films on the market. Better quality and replaces both the old CHS/Efke 100 and 50 in terms of grain and spectral sensitivity.

Team ADOX · Aug 26, 2020

JPD said:
Thank you for taking the time to reply!

You are welcome.
We really appreciate our customers who are often creating new ideas and suggestions. And sometimes it is even possible to implement some of them.
In general we are open-minded to new ideas.
But our customers should also keep in mind that we are a very small and still very "young" company. A kind of "start-up". Therefore our resources are limited and we have to go in small steps. And with very clear priorities.

ADOX - Innovation in Analog Photography.

dimkalinux · Sep 6, 2020

Adox CHS 100 II in FX-39 - a grainy, but it is nice grain.

In Silvermax dev grain is much more better.

Donald Qualls · Sep 6, 2020

Still seems a little grainy for a 100 speed film.

dimkalinux · Sep 6, 2020

Yes, I don’t know why.

also, notice problems with scanning this film on Nikon Coolscan. Only after marking holes with dark marker I successfully scan it.

JPD · Sep 6, 2020

Scanning film can make the grain look much bigger, because of grain aliasing. Even scanned large format negatives like 4x5 can look like grainy fast 135-film sometimes, but grainless on normal optical prints.

dimkalinux · Sep 6, 2020

Yes, I’m going to print this film.

dimkalinux · Sep 7, 2020

Helge said:
I really don’t see much point in using this film with anything other than the developer made for it. Otherwise use TMAX.

Hi. Which one developer do you mean?

Helge · Sep 7, 2020

dimkalinux said:
Hi. Which one developer do you mean?

Sorry. It was late and I was distracted.
Thought about CMS 20 II, with ADOTECH developer.

flavio81 · Sep 9, 2020

fdonadio said:
If you were translating from German to Portuguese, it would have made perfect sense!

It would in spanish, too!

MattKing · Sep 9, 2020

So what you you use for mouth to mouth resuscitation!?

fdonadio · Sep 9, 2020

MattKing said:
So what you you use for mouth to mouth resuscitation!?

The same. Translating word for word to English:

“The news spread through mouth to mouth.”

“He applied mouth to mouth respiration to save her.”

Yes, it’s not real “valid” English, but...

MattKing · Sep 9, 2020

fdonadio said:
The same. Translating word for word to English:

“The news spread through mouth to mouth.”

“He applied mouth to mouth respiration to save her.”

Yes, it’s not real “valid” English, but...

Thank you for that.
This really highlights how important the vernacular is to our understanding, particularly on an international site with a lot of participants whose first languages are not all the same.
Now if we could only agree on pre-rinse and the importance of stop bath, maybe we could accomplish universal understanding!

foc · Sep 10, 2020

MattKing said:
Now if we could only agree on pre-rinse and the importance of stop bath, maybe we could accomplish universal understanding!

And don't forget the squeegee.

fdonadio · Sep 10, 2020

MattKing said:
Thank you for that.
(...)
Now if we could only agree on pre-rinse and the importance of stop bath, maybe we could accomplish universal understanding!

I wouldn’t touch these subjects here, even with a ten foot stick!

Donald Qualls · Sep 11, 2020

fdonadio said:
I wouldn’t touch these subjects here, even with a ten foot stick!

A ten foot stick is pretty much guaranteeing scratched negatives...

Henning Serger · Sep 11, 2020

dimkalinux said:
Yes, I don’t know why.

also, notice problems with scanning this film on Nikon Coolscan. Only after marking holes with dark marker I successfully scan it.

I have developed CHS 100 II in FX-39 II as well. Grain is visible, of course, but it is not "excessive" or too much at all.
FX-39 II is a sharpness / acutance developer, so getting a more sharp / accentuated grain is to be expected. It is of course also a matter of taste, but I like the combination of CHS 100 II with FX-39 II.
See the examples I have posted above in this thread: You see grain, but not too much. The scans are drumscans (but with lower resolution). Drumscans offer a very natural, original-like grain. So the grain appearance of the drumscans is very similar to my results with my real optical prints on silver-halide photo paper.
Some scanner types like the Coolscan do indeed enhance grain by scanner noise.

Best regards,
Henning

m00dawg · Sep 15, 2020

Anyone else using CHS ii with XTOL Replenishment (XTOL-R)? I just got 4 boxes of 4x5 and 10 rolls 35mm of CHS ii in woohoo! I've missed it since I ran out of my sheets a while back. I've been doing a bit of densitometry lately and found out that my original dev time (9:30) wasn't too far off. In 35mm, I get a gamma of 0.54 and CI of 0.53. At 11:00 I get 0.62 and 0.61. That seems pretty close! But, when I went to try calculating ISO (using Kodak's method in h740, the sensitometry workbook), I get an ISO of 25 since my speed point is a 1.5.

This seems low, especially for XTOL? My only other ISO calculations so far are with Pancro 400 and HR-50. I got 320 ISO for Pancro (at a dev time of 15:00) which does seem about right, and 3 for HR50 (at a dev time of 5:00) which also matches some test exposures I did though seems low as well. I'll be testing other films as well. I've done some testing of FP4 but haven't yet calculated ISO since I find it's easier to do when creating the graphs on pen and paper. I've included the curve I get (plotted using Power BI) for CHS ii at 11:00. I can scan my pen and paper one as well if someone wants to see it.

By the way, not knocking CHS ii at all - it's my favorite 4x5 film and am so happy to have it now in 35mm and 4x5! I'm just trying to work out if that ISO is believable or what I might be doing wrong there since I've typically been exposing it at box speed with some great results. ISO aside, it seems to work really well in XTOL-R for me anyway (though all my photos have been made on 4x5 to this point) and in general my darkroom prints have been rather straightforward. So I don't want to read too terribly much into things but being off by two stops did cause me to raise an eyebrow.

EDIT: Put my FP4 curves onto pen and paper and though the curve is a little too high to use Kodak's method, I went ahead and did the calculation (800 / Antilog(A) where A is the log at .1 above Dmin) and got 80. My exposure was probably a tad high so I might be a bit above Dmin as well, but 80 certainly sounds like the ballpark of where I would expect it to fall. I tend to like pulling FP4 to 64 so that sort of explains why. This makes me think my findings for CHS ii aren't crazy far off?

m00dawg · Sep 22, 2020

As an update, I both did exposure bracket tests where I took 7 scenes and bracketed between 12.5 to 200 ISO as well as shot a normal roll metered at 50. The short answer is I don't think my ISO calculation of 25 is correct. Practically it looks to be more like 80 for me. For the details:

For the bracket tests I used incident metering with 1 scene also using a strobe. The strobe scene is way off since the incident meter I think was perhaps seeing too much of the strobe relative to the composition. For that one, my best exposure was 12.5 and 25 was good - the others seemed too dark, though 50 ISO may be workable. 2 scenes were of portraits (my kiddo and our dog) and I think I like ISO 25 the best, though 50 was good. 100 was a tad dark. For the sort of regular outdoor scenes I found 100 seemed to look the best.

For my normal roll, I used my X-700 and metered on-camera. I found these to be good save for a few frames which were brighter than they should be and overall they seemed to lean a bit bright.

To judge these I made contact sheets of both rolls using a #1 filter (as I have a condenser enlarger) and Adorama's RC paper, which I have found tends to be a little contrasty.

My takeaway is that it feels like my ISO isn't the 25 I got when using Kodak's method even though the math lines up. Not sure what I'm doing wrong though. Pictorially the results I got were rather good - some frames had nearly perfect exposure and definitely a few frames I plan on enlarging. These results align with the results I was getting previously when I shot CHS ii in 4x5 (and rated at 100) - before I messed about with any of these curves.

4x5 will be different since I would largely be spot metering but tend to check the lights and darks and average them out. My graph shows a shallow shoulder, which I expected based on Adox's description of the film, and gives me what looks to be a workable range of 5-7 stops of mostly a straight line. I think for the first few shots I take in 4x5 I will do some bracketing just to see how my metering methods line up.

I did these same tests for HR50, although not quite as thorough, and I found my ISO value (of 3) in XTOL-R actually seemed to be correct. More testing is needing for that though since that seems awfully low. It's a film Adox recommends the HR developer of course so XTOL-R could just be a bad match for that film.

Not sure if these results are helpful to anyone but I wanted to be sure I did them so I can put my remaining 7 rolls of 35mm film and 4 boxes of 4x5 film to good use!

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 22, 2020

This is a lovely film. Been using it for a couple of years now. I just shot a few 4x5 sheets yesterday, along with some CMS 20 II. Will develop today. The 100 in Pyrocat-HD, and CMS 20 II in Adotech IV.

m00dawg · Sep 22, 2020

Andrew O'Neill said:
This is a lovely film. Been using it for a couple of years now. I just shot a few 4x5 sheets yesterday, along with some CMS 20 II. Will develop today. The 100 in Pyrocat-HD, and CMS 20 II in Adotech IV.

Agreed! I really fell in love with CHS ii last year when I first tried it in 4x5. It quickly became my favorite medium speed film. Hence the testing - I wanted to be sure I had my process down pat. And it turns out, largely, I do.

CMS II I'd like to try, perhaps after I figure out HR50 a bit more since HR50 has been a fun puzzle to try and figure out.

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 22, 2020

m00dawg said:
Agreed! I really fell in love with CHS ii last year when I first tried it in 4x5. It quickly became my favorite medium speed film. Hence the testing - I wanted to be sure I had my process down pat. And it turns out, largely, I do.

CMS II I'd like to try, perhaps after I figure out HR50 a bit more since HR50 has been a fun puzzle to try and figure out.

HR50 is on my list!

m00dawg · Sep 22, 2020

I had some nice results with it at box speed but was over-developing I think (at least for targetting a normal contrast I suppose). It's got a cool look to it though! It was rather punchy for me but in a different way than P30 (another film I like).

removedacct3 · Sep 23, 2020

Andrew O'Neill said:
... The 100 in Pyrocat-HD ...

Never noticed anything strange developing CHS in a catechol developer?

Reason for asking is this excerpt from the Adox PDF: "Films with an AHU undercoat are not recomended to develop in taning developers such as Finol, Tanol or PMK containing either Brenzkatechin or Pyrogallol because they may cause small holes in the film (emulsion lift off)"
http://www.adox.de/Technical_Informations/TA_CHS100II_EN.pdf

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 23, 2020

MrclSchprs said:
Never noticed anything strange developing CHS in a catechol developer?

Reason for asking is this excerpt from the Adox PDF: "Films with an AHU undercoat are not recomended to develop in taning developers such as Finol, Tanol or PMK containing either Brenzkatechin or Pyrogallol because they may cause small holes in the film (emulsion lift off)"
http://www.adox.de/Technical_Informations/TA_CHS100II_EN.pdf

Nope. Never had any issues. The only weird thing is that I have to use it at EI 32 with pyrocat-hd.

ADOX CHS 100 II is back in 35mm!

JPD

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