Our first roll of Adox Color Mission film going into a Yashica FX-3

Like all of you, we are always excited for the opportunity to try new films. It seems like this spring has been exceedingly generous too. Between Adox Color Mission and Kodak Gold 200 in medium format (plus the announcement of a new Cinestill stock and the JCH Fugufilm) our cameras are getting some fresh flavors to explore.

Our first batch of Adox Color Mission film arrived in mid March and sold out within hours. We were limited to ordering only 50 rolls, so it wasn’t at all surprising that it went so fast. Of course, several of us here at the shop picked up a roll to try out ourselves and we wanted to share those initial results with you and give you our first impressions on this new film stock. But first, just a little bit of background info on Adox Color Mission, at least as much as we know.

Adox Color Mission is an ISO 200 color negative film that is currently only available in 35mm. It is currently a part of a limited edition of film stock. As FotoImpex, the primary source of Color Mission, describes it:
“One batch of colour film has been co-researched with and coated for Adox by a company, which went bankrupt shortly after the first run. Now, Adox is starting a fully independent R&D for colour film, which requires significant investments. The Adox chemical production is financing the research of new photochemistry. The Polywarmtone emulsion is helping to advance the paper product development. Now, time has come to release Color Mission – those films coated a few years ago, kept in the cool house until this moment.”
The Color Mission we are seeing now is technically a discontinued film stock, kept in cold storage and being sold to generate revenue to help fund the production of new Adox color film. FotoImpex has stated that a new film is several years of work away. They say it will take them four years or more. Meanwhile, they also have let us know that they have enough stock of Color Mission to last those intervening years, assuming they dole it out in intervals. This means we will see intermittent, but consistent, availability of Color Mission over the next few years. It is also probably worth mentioning that whatever Adox color film comes from this development, it may well end up being different from the Color Mission we are using now. But who knows? We also don’t know the exact frequency or amounts of Color Mission’s availability. Our first order with FotoImpex was limited to 50 rolls and was placed in late February. They have let us know that the next available batch will be in late April. Will it also be limited to 50 rolls? We shall see.

Naturally, our first questions were, “What will this film look like? Will it be high saturation? Low? High contrast? Low? Grain? Etc, etc” Adox provided us with this primer, “ADOX is releasing Color Mission - a film with delicately vibrant minty greens, peachy reds, airy grain and a purpose at the core.” Ok…. Not really sure how to interpret “airy grain”. Minty greens and peachy reds tell us some info, but not a lot. So the best thing we could was get out with a roll and get some firsthand experience. It can take us a while to get through 36 exposures - we do have a tendency to make art projects out of things like this - but we were on a mission with our Color Mission.

Not sure if we would call these peachy reds, but they definitely pop.

Our very first impressions came from seeing the developed film. We noticed three things. First, the film has motion picture sprocket holes, just like Cinestill. This doesn’t mean a ton, it is just an interesting bit of info to file away. Second, the edge code was very sparse, with just the name Adox and no other info. And third, it looked like normal color film, as in it has a typical orange film base. There wasn’t much we could really tell beyond that, so into the scanner it went.

Our Adox Color Mission scanned pretty well right from the get-go. There was a bit of a color cast, but nothing like scanning the Silberra color films which always scan with a heavy orangish cast that needs manual correction. We use a Noritsu S-1800 as our production scanner but the images you see here were rescanned on a Kodak HR500, a real old school film scanner. It is worth noting that results were consistent across both scanners. The staff member who shot these images likes doing pre-scans on the Noritsu because it is fast and easy and rescans select images at maximum resolution on the Kodak because it has a more natural look to its grain and tonality.

Now that we had our scanned images in hand, here is what we can sum up for you. Adox Color Mission is both higher contrast and saturation. It definitely has colors that pop: especially reds and greens. We didn’t photograph any bright blues or yellows, so we’ll have to wait until later rolls to see how those look. But overall, this film is crisp and poppy. We were a bit surprised, but happily so. If we were to compare it to another film we would tentatively put it alongside Kodak Ektar or Pro Image in terms of color saturation and contrast. And then there is the matter of film grain. Color Mission is fairly grainy. It is a nice enough grain though and didn’t really jump out at us. We would not characterize this film as high grain, but it definitely isn’t fine grained either. In this sense it seems pretty comparable to Kodak Gold 200… perhaps just a smidge grainier.

This cloudscape image helps give you a sense of Color Mission’s film grain. It also shows how the film’s higher contrast can emphasize subtler colors.

We’ll wrap up this short summary by saying we are pretty pleased with these initial results. The film has a bright, crispy look to it. We still have other areas to explore with our next rolls, such as how the film handles portraiture or long exposures. But we wanted to share our initial impressions of this film with all of you to help you get prepared for it.

We definitely look forward to seeing more of this film, though we’ll remind you that availability is going to be limited and sporadic. The best thing you can do is head over to Color Mission’s page in our online inventory and either bookmark it or sign up for an e-mail notification. We send those out the moment the film hits our inventory, and given how fast the last batch sold, this may be the only reliable way to have a shot at buying some for yourself. Here is a link right to Color Mission.

Meanwhile we will be sure to share any further experiences we have with this film as we use more of it ourselves. But we can send you off with a few more images from our first roll. Enjoy!

Adox Color Mission Film Review: First Roll Impressions