New at Photokina 2012: ADOX SILVERMAX 35mm film 135/36

[cmo]

And you trust every person who is not MACO?

No, that was just a pun to say that I have more trust in every other vendor. Maybe you don't like my humour.

Aren't you naive?

No. I don't fall easily for marketing bla. If I were naive my last sentences above would be different, more like the nonsense that claqueur trolls post in forums.

Fotokemika has just announced the ceasing of their production, and a few days later, a new film is announced to replace the ISO 100 !

Do you know how a film is made, and how long maturation is?

Please, think twice !

Do you?

Well, Photokina is 'fun' every two years. They found a good point of time for the announcement. The death of Plus-X would have been another good opportunity. At least they don't call it "the APX successor" or make similar use of other companies' achievements.

I guess it won't be as cheap as the last remainings of APX. They will not only max the silver content but also the price if they can show it's better.

[georg16nik]

Aurelien,
If You want to story-tell your mind to Adox (or any other company)..this is the wrong thread, many of us, film enthusiast, would not understand You properly.
Lets try the film first, then talk/conspire, OK?

Thanks

[MDR]

Actually they do, Mirko called it a modified version of APX, this means APX successor, does it not. Marketing is lies I don't trust Maco's marketing nor do I believe in the Fairy Godmother. More Silver than original APX means different than original APX.

Dominik

[ath]

If this film is a modified APX100 it might be the closest thing to APX100 we have today.
Personally I'm not interested in APX100 (too grainy for my taste) and the need to use the special developer to get the claimed advantages is a minus for me.
If the (claimed) finer grain is achievable with standard developers like XTOL, I might test it and see if I like the combination of image and price.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

OK, let's stop bickering about the pointless and complicated life of eastern European photo companies, and think about the film instead.

I'll repeat what I posted on other forums, but I don't see the point of this film.

It sounds interesting in theory, but what's the point of having 14 zones if your paper can't print them all?

All photographic films can be already be developed to cover a range of densities that is commensurate with the exposure range of a paper. That's why you can have full black, full white, and all the grey tones in between.

So what are you going to do? Develop to a lower contrast? But then you'll end up with the same Dmax as any other film, and bad tone separation.

You don't need extra zones to print silver gelatin. The only reason I know to have film developed to a very high Dmax is when you are printing on a soft-contrast paper, such as platinum/palladium, Van Dyke brown, etc.

But these processes are mostly sensitive to UV light, and are very slow, which preclude enlargement printing, unless you have a UV-source light in your enlarger. 35mm contact prints are a bit tiny.

It could be a film designed to do slides (in which case you do need the extra Dmax); it could also be a film designed to do copy work (like the late Tech Pan, which could build an impressive contrast), but I see nothing to this effect in the press release.

I smell a gimmick.

[ath]

It sounds interesting in theory, but what's the point of having 14 zones if your paper can't print them all?

For me the point is burning in e.g. a sky.
But so far Acros and Delta 100 had more that sufficient headroom for this.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

For me the point is burning in e.g. a sky.
But so far Acros and Delta 100 had more that sufficient headroom for this.

Good point--but as you say, current films can build enough density before hitting the shoulder in the H&D curve.

I expect something about the murky concept of "tonality" to soon pop up as explanation...

[Michael R 1974]

This might be a minor point, but FP4+, HP5+, Delta, TMX/TMY, Tri-X, Acros etc can all hold "14 zones" of exposure. And Acros develops to very high densities/highlight contrast before shouldering, even with soft development. So this business about "silver rich" should be taken with a grain of salt. It may or may not be a fine film, but the hype is suspect.

[DREW WILEY]

There's a distinction between a film being able to hold a long range of values due to compression ("minus" and/or compensating development with its inevitable compression of midtone microcontrast)
and a film which will actually carry a very wide range of values upon a relative straight part of the
curve. To my knowledge, the only current ultrafine-grained film which will do this is the now defunct
Efke 25 (about 12 stops). Otherwise, you're speaking about old-school thick-emulsion coarse films like Super-XX, Bergger 200, and Fomapan 200. I obviously have no idea of how the new film in question factors into this.

[DREW WILEY]

Oh, and Michel - tonality is the name of the game. The distinction I just referred to makes a significant difference in real world printing. There's nothing murky about it. And no, you can't do the
same kind of thing with Delta 100 or ACROS etc (fine films in their own right, but not the same kind
of thing at all).