Adox CHS50 – My Last Roll

(Three Images). A few weeks ago, my last roll of  Adox CHS ART film was shot and developed – an ‘old school’ film made in the same way it was 60 years ago and despite a few irritations, was a bit of a special film. The Efke factory (where it was made for Adox) was closed last year, so shooting the last roll was a sad day – I used to use a lot of Efke film.

The CHS range (25, 50 and 100 ASA) had a fine grain and an unusual response to colour which gave the results a special ‘vintage’ look. The example below has been lightly layered to enhance the effect. Everything developed in Rodinal 1+50, and shot on either an OM1N or an OM2n with a variety of lenses.

The range of tones captured is impressive due to the high silver content though they may seem rather low contrast to digital photographers. A characteristic darker appearance of blue skies can be seen in the example below.

Its weakness is its soft emulsion which produced some very dusty negatives when compared to modern films. It also needed more care than usual during development – especially with regards to temperature. Above 20 degrees centigrade, the emulsion becomes very soft, and at 25 degrees will separate from the backing! Still, the vintage look was worth the dust cloning required – in the example below there are still a few dust spots in the sky above the church tower.

All is not lost though – Adox are developing a 100 ASA replacement, made in Germany and available in 35mm (36 exposure and 100 ft rolls), 120 and every variety of sheet film size – see here.

I’m really looking forward to trying it – I just hope we don’t have to wait too long!

Hope you find this useful, and thanks for looking.

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