Any body tried Adox CMS 120

steveo_mcg

steveo_mcg

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I spotted this a little while back and was reminded whilst looking for somthing in another thread. Firstcall (probably others) do 6 rolls with a dedicated developer for for £30 but I was wondering if anyone on here had tried it.

Adox's instructions seem a little counter to my experience and common internet knowledge, Adox suggest two stops from wide open so around F4 to minimise difraction whilst I usually shoot about F8 to F16 to get the "sweet spot" of the lens and get the maxium dof. It also gives it a High days and Holidays ring.

http://www.adox.de/english/ADOX Films/ADOX_Films/ADOX_CMS_Films.html
Think you can´t shoot at 20 ASA?
Let us explain this to you:
If you want high resolution pictures you need to open your lens aperture to one stop below maximum opening. Otherwise the lens defraction will lower your lens' resolution down to half of what this film can capture. Best lenses are F1,4 high speed high quality lenses like Nikkors, Summiluxes, Zeiss, Rokkors or Canon lenses.
This puts you effectively to between F2 and F4.
Any normal winter day 2 hours after sunrise and up to two hours before sunset will give you something like a 125th or a 250th of a second at F 3,5.
Therefore the film can be used under almost any condition where it makes sense to use it because there is actually something to see.
More speed would force you to stop down too much on a sunny day, letting slip what your lens can actually achieve.
In bad light conditions the film makes no sense because you barely see something so you might as well use a lower resolving film to capture this.
Basically, you can shoot everyday with this film unless the sun is gone or behind heavy clouds or you want to shoot indors without a flash.
All CMS images in the catalogue and on the ADOX webiste (www.adox.de) are shot free hand at F2,8 with a 35mm or a 50mm lens.
Click to expand...
 
steveo_mcg said:
I spotted this a little while back and was reminded whilst looking for somthing in another thread. Firstcall (probably others) do 6 rolls with a dedicated developer for for £30 but I was wondering if anyone on here had tried it.

Adox's instructions seem a little counter to my experience and common internet knowledge, Adox suggest two stops from wide open so around F4 to minimise difraction whilst I usually shoot about F8 to F16 to get the "sweet spot" of the lens and get the maxium dof. It also gives it a High days and Holidays ring.

http://www.adox.de/english/ADOX Films/ADOX_Films/ADOX_CMS_Films.html
Click to expand...

Adox have alway produced a range of extremely high definition films . In days gone by my favorites were R14 and R17 120 roll film developed in neofin blue.
Slow film are by their nature fine grain high contrast high definition, and need to be developed accordingly with low contrast or beutler type compensating developers. These maximize shadow detail while preserving the highlights. As the Films are inherently very fine grain the developers should not be of a fine grain solvent or physical type, which would reduce definition and increase contrast.

Beutler developers enhance edge sharpness by increasing edge acutance during development.

It is generally understood that a lens is capable of its highest definition at about two stops below its maximum aperture.
This has nothing to do with maximum depth of field or diffraction limits.

A shot taken at a small aperture may show the greatest depth of field, but it will not have the greatest possible sharpness nor avoid diffraction.
 
Palm labs do a service for CMS20, Techical Pan etc using ultra dilute Rodinal to get normal contrast. They ask for a £2 surcharge per roll on top of their normal B&W development prices, you won't find it in their price list anymore, but I asked about a year ago if they still did and they replied yes. I would give them an email and ask:

http://www.palmlabs.co.uk/contact-us
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
It is generally understood that a lens is capable of its highest definition at about two stops below its maximum aperture.
This has nothing to do with maximum depth of field or diffraction limits.

A shot taken at a small aperture may show the greatest depth of field, but it will not have the greatest possible sharpness nor avoid diffraction.
Click to expand...

Exactly that. For singular lens elements, the wider the diameter of the lens itself (aka the diameter of the tranparent 'hole', most generally known as the aperture :D) the smaller the focus spot size the lens can theoretically produce. Obviously though, lenses used on cameras are compound lenses consisting of many elements and so as rightly said above, the sweet spot is about 2 stops from wide open. This is so because generally the optimal balance between lens aberrations/imperfections and the effect of the transparent diameter on resolving ability.
 
Aye, AFAIK diffraction happens at the other end, maybe f/22 for 35mm cameras, normal lenses. I'm guessing smaller stops at MF, since it's about the physical size, not the relative area. OTOH I think with my (ahem) X10 I'd be likely to get diffraction effects above f/8... although I've never ever seen signs of softness on that camera that could be attributable to diffraction!

PS Cambridge in Colour do an excellent tutorial on diffraction at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm which suggests that for a RB67 f/32 is not diffraction limited, though f/64 is, whereas for 35mm the limit comes between f/22 and f/32.
 
Thanks guys thats all much clearer now.

Pan 25 already out resolves my scanner so I don't suppose it matters beyond hypothetical enlargements or if I ever feel like wet printing to a wall.


@Terrywoodenpic I've seen neofin blue mentioned a lot when it comes to these high def films, I really do need to try it.
 
Diffraction always sets a theoretical limit to resolution - even when a lens is used wide open - by which I mean that a "perfect" lens will always be limited by diffraction in terms of what it can resolve. In practice, most lenses aren't perfect, and stopping down reduces their faults. Eventually, there comes a point at which the increasingly better performance from stopping down (because some aberrations are reduced) is outweighed by the increasingly worse performance caused by diffraction. Some lenses reach their best performance when stopped down by as little as a half stop; most are optimum about 2 stops down (I'm thinking of prime lenses not zooms).

As a rough rule of thumb, the maximum resolution possible in lpm is 1500/f where "f" is the aperture. The "1500" is an emprical value based on acceptable contrast; and also on an average value of the wavelength since diffraction effects depend on the wavelength of the light.
 
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Alan Clogwyn said:
I use it between 20 an 400 developed in Caffenol and C41. Scanner is the weakest link in the chain, now I'm replacing that with bellows on my A7R I may finally be able to do this film justice.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkandindustrial/sets/72157629558951316/

http://alanclogwyn.wordpress.com/20...e-t-max-on-steroids/?relatedposts_exclude=586
Click to expand...

Alan, thanks that's a great summary. Looks like it's just the thing for your quarry work. I think I'll get some and give it a go with the included dev, not tried it caffenol yet.

C41 chems? I take it you don't blix it.
 
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