ADOX CMS 20

[Ouroboros]

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On 1/25/2022 at 11:52 PM, IkarusJohn said:

 

@Ouroboros, love your work, Steve.  I have CMS 20ii in the freezer, and can’t wait to try it.  I’m holding back for the moment, as I’m re-thinking my film photography.  I have an M-A (historically with Tri-X) and an SWC (usually with 50 Velvia) and I’m reconsidering how I use them, and what for.  A sort of back to fundamentals approach, as I seem to have lost my way … it’s about light and what we photograph, right?

@IkarusJohnIt’s all about light and finding your own voice rather than be lead down a rabbit hole by gear .  No better way to discover your own photography than to experiment with different films and processing techniques.  
 

CMS 20ii is an incredibly versatile emulsion. Far better than the original, IMO. You might make mistakes with it at the start, but you’ll soon learn how it works.  Adotech iv developer is the key, try iso 6-12 and be aware that contrast can quickly increase at higher iso.  I use distilled water out of our dehumidifier to mix dev & fix.  Don’t use a stop bath.  Don’t fully invert your tank, it needs gentle agitation.  I give the tank one gentle anti-clockwise swirl and a 45 deg tilt to the left and right each minute . Fix for no more than 45 secs and keep your dev and fix separate from other films, use only with CMS 20ii.

Good luck, I think you’ll like it!
 

 

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[otto.f]

32 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Fix for no more than 45 secs

❗😳

[Jul]

I don't have much experience with this film, this is straight from scan.
Even with worse case scenario (harsh midday light) and using rodinal,
result is usable. Refining the development should give technically better
results even with rodinal. I agree with those who wrote to rate it lower
than box speed.

The guy was on the go but happy to pose one second with his motorbike
before he left.

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[250swb]

6 hours ago, Jul said:

I don't have much experience with this film, this is straight from scan.
Even with worse case scenario (harsh midday light) and using rodinal,
result is usable. Refining the development should give technically better
results even with rodinal. I agree with those who wrote to rate it lower
than box speed.

The guy was on the go but happy to pose one second with his motorbike
before he left.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

A remarkable result, as you say a worst case scenario, but the film is very tolerant of a wide contrast range when exposed and processed sympathetically, even in Rodinal! What you may find is that overexposing highlights causes a type of flare caused by the lack of an anti-halation layer.

Edited January 30, 2022 by 250swb

[giannis]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:25 AM, Ouroboros said:

CMS 20ii is an incredibly versatile emulsion.

No offence, I get you're excited with the film and what it can do, but versatile is not the word you're looking for. You even listed the reasons why CMS is really not versatile:

1. needs special low contrast developer for good results
2. very low 6-12ISO works best
3. distilled water
4. very gentle agitation
5. very short fixing times
6. separate fixer for this film

This sounds very fussy for a film! Can't think of anything fussier tbh in recent memory.

Even though I don't agree with all points, 1. and 2. are bang on and my experience as well.

As a side note, it's interesting to see a resurgence in technical films for pictorial use. I remember back in the day, lots of enthusiasts on a tight budget would experiment with them (me included), as a way to get huge and relatively grain-free enlargements on a budget. A "normal" 35mm system camera would be, say $1,000 in todays money. A medium format one closer to $10,000, and that huge gap was over the whole system, i.e. lenses, enlargers etc. . For someone wanting bigger enlargements, jumping a format was prohibitive, so they (we) were willing to try to get close on a fraction of the budget with a technical film, at a the (big) expense of versatility and practicality of technical films. And despite the fuss and the limitations (especially wrt contrast and development), it was the only option.

Of course after digital things changed and medium format cameras tanked in resale prices. You could get a basic system for $300 and about MF enlargers, many times you could pick them up for free cause people were trying to get rid of them to free the considerable space they took. From my circle at least, virtually everybody got a medium format camera, and it was much easier and hassle free (and more versatile) to get huge enlargements with "normal" ISO 100 films, let alone t-grain ones (even at 400), rather than bother with a technical film in 35mm.

I remember in the early days of digital (and a bit later) that it tech films got a bit of surgence for pictorial use, when they were marketed as such with catchy names like "gigabit film", and also clickbait-y articles about the hundreds of megapixels of resolution they would give you, in those days of the MP wars between film and digital. Of course the hype soon died out again. Now I notice a third resurgence. Could it be that used medium format cameras have started going up (considerably) in value? Or maybe that 35mm lenses have become so optically near perfect that people want to extract everything or "benchmark" them using a tech film?

[250swb]

2 hours ago, giannis said:

Could it be that used medium format cameras have started going up (considerably) in value? Or maybe that 35mm lenses have become so optically near perfect that people want to extract everything or "benchmark" them using a tech film?

I think neither. The film is worth using for it's pictorial qualities alone whether 35mm or when it eventually makes a return in MF. And 35mm lenses haven't become optically perfect, choose the right ones from the past forty years and it doesn't matter if you use Nikon, Olympus, Canon, or Leica, they will shine with this film if you use them perfectly. It's a slightly different job you need to do but saying it's not versatile is ridiculous, it's just pigeonholing a 35mm camera to be one thing, something where you load it with a fast film and dart around like David Bailey saying 'yeah baby'.

Edited January 31, 2022 by 250swb

[Ornello]

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Here is some interesting info on these types of films:

 

https://casualphotophile.com/2022/01/31/argenti-nanotomic-x-bw-film-review/

[giannis]

1 hour ago, 250swb said:

it's not versatile is ridiculous, it's just pigeonholing a 35mm camera to be one thing, something where you load it with a fast film and dart around like David Bailey saying 'yeah baby'.

See, this is not what I'm saying though. Speed alone is not the point. Speed is only one aspect of versatility. A second one is latitude and contrast. A third one is flexibility and good results in a variety of typical developers. CMS greatly sacrifices all of those for low grain and high resolution. How can it be considered versatile? High resolving and grainless? Sure. Versatile? Not at all. I can throw any slow speed film (ISO 50-100) in a variety of general purpose developers, and I'll get more latitude, lower contrast, more forgiveness in exposure and development mistakes, and more speed to boot, than CMS. CMS is highly capable in its use case, i.e. high resolving power and low grain, at the expense of everything else. Which makes sense, when you optimise one parameter to the extreme, you end up making equally big sacrifices elsewhere. All I'm saying is it is very surprising to me to see CMS described not just as grainless, but as versatile, since I can't think of a less versatile film than that.

And I don't mean to say that TriX and the like are the beall of versatility. There are "unusual" films that are also versatile. Take for instance Rollei IR400. Can be used as a great, low grain high resolution general purpose film, with the sharpness and grain of TMax 100 even though it's a stop faster (real/standard speed). Then in tungsten light, as fast as TMax 400. Put an IR filter on, and it's an excellent IR film too - among the best ones in fact as far as IR reach goes. Yet it sells for cheaper than TMax 100 and 400, and almost half as much as SFX 200. Develops fine in all the typical developers, with normal contrast and latitude. That is versatile.

Edited February 1, 2022 by giannis

[Ouroboros]

6 hours ago, giannis said:

No offence, I get you're excited with the film and what it can do, but versatile is not the word you're looking for. You even listed the reasons why CMS is really not versatile:

1. needs special low contrast developer for good results
2. very low 6-12ISO works best
3. distilled water
4. very gentle agitation
5. very short fixing times
6. separate fixer for this film

This sounds very fussy for a film! Can't think of anything fussier tbh in recent memory.

Even though I don't agree with all points, 1. and 2. are bang on and my experience as well.

As a side note, it's interesting to see a resurgence in technical films for pictorial use. I remember back in the day, lots of enthusiasts on a tight budget would experiment with them (me included), as a way to get huge and relatively grain-free enlargements on a budget. A "normal" 35mm system camera would be, say $1,000 in todays money. A medium format one closer to $10,000, and that huge gap was over the whole system, i.e. lenses, enlargers etc. . For someone wanting bigger enlargements, jumping a format was prohibitive, so they (we) were willing to try to get close on a fraction of the budget with a technical film, at a the (big) expense of versatility and practicality of technical films. And despite the fuss and the limitations (especially wrt contrast and development), it was the only option.

Of course after digital things changed and medium format cameras tanked in resale prices. You could get a basic system for $300 and about MF enlargers, many times you could pick them up for free cause people were trying to get rid of them to free the considerable space they took. From my circle at least, virtually everybody got a medium format camera, and it was much easier and hassle free (and more versatile) to get huge enlargements with "normal" ISO 100 films, let alone t-grain ones (even at 400), rather than bother with a technical film in 35mm.

I remember in the early days of digital (and a bit later) that it tech films got a bit of surgence for pictorial use, when they were marketed as such with catchy names like "gigabit film", and also clickbait-y articles about the hundreds of megapixels of resolution they would give you, in those days of the MP wars between film and digital. Of course the hype soon died out again. Now I notice a third resurgence. Could it be that used medium format cameras have started going up (considerably) in value? Or maybe that 35mm lenses have become so optically near perfect that people want to extract everything or "benchmark" them using a tech film?

No offence taken. Any film that deals as well as CMS 20ii does with a wide range of tones and almost complete lack of grain is ‘versatile’ in my book, but it is probably not the right description in other ways.  My point being is that I find version ii a significant improvement over CMS 20.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Ouroboros

[250swb]

7 hours ago, giannis said:

. All I'm saying is it is very surprising to me to see CMS described not just as grainless, but as versatile, since I can't think of a less versatile film than that.

 

Sometimes versatility in one area isn't what you need to go further in another, a Saturn rocket wasn't much good for anything other than going to the moon, an F1 car is pretty bad for doing the supermarket shop. You are making the 35mm camera and the vision of the photographer more versatile the more types of film you can successfully put into it. There may be one ideal developer for CMS20 II (Adotech), but C41 is the only ideal developer for colour negative (or XP2 film), does that make colour film less versatile?

[250swb]

9 hours ago, Ornello said:

Here is some interesting info on these types of films:

 

https://casualphotophile.com/2022/01/31/argenti-nanotomic-x-bw-film-review/

That's actually a very interesting article and for a lot of the technical and process descriptions 'CMS20 II' could be substituted for the 'Nonotomic' being tested. Especially interesting is the test for colour sensitivity and the reduced sensitivity to blue light, making these copy films ideal for traditional blue sky fluffy cloud landscape photography and something I've noticed myself. The results he got by using the 'wrong developer' are again remarkable.

Edited February 1, 2022 by 250swb

[otto.f]

12 hours ago, giannis said:

tight budget

 

12 hours ago, giannis said:

medium format cameras have started going up (considerably) in value

In my view it has hardly anything to do with money. You can get a 6x9 Fuji for less than 1000€. I think it has to do with the joy of experimenting with film for people who see digital at least as a relative value. And I think the CMS is mostly used and appropriate for landscape and in this situations a 35mm camera carries a lot more convenient than the bigger formats. On big and long travels with different goals and types of photography this film is a practical solution for weight. But most people are just willing to try films with a special character. They would also do that if CMS was in 120 too.

Edited February 1, 2022 by otto.f

[Ouroboros]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:20 AM, giannis said:

……..Or maybe that 35mm lenses have become so optically near perfect that people want to extract everything or "benchmark" them using a tech film?

That’s another example of CMS versatility.  

Edited February 4, 2022 by Ouroboros

[madNbad]

I have five rolls of CMS20II sitting in the refrigerator plus two bottles of Adotech IV developer. Thanks to all for the information and images, inculding which developers gave poor results. Now I have a better idea of what ISO to aim for.