I had the luck to happen across a very small amount of this rarely seen vintage film and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it produced excellent results nearly 50 years after it was produced!

    ADOX "Fotowerke Dr. C. Schleussner GmbH" was the world's first photographic materials manufacturer. Dr. Carl Schleussner was a pioneer of the wet-collodion process during the early years of photography, and formed his manufacturing company in 1860 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He worked with physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, who had discovered X-rays, and Dr. Schleussner invented the first photographic X-ray plate.

   The legendary KB 14 and KB 17 films, introduced around 1952, were the world´s first thin layer films, making ADOX famous worldwide. This thin film and "single layer" emulsion, with a very high silver content, resulted in an image sharpness that had not been seen before, earning it the "German Wonder Film" nickname.

    The ADOX formulas were later used by DuPont and Efke and there's even a new company using the historic name and trying to make a go of it with the old recipes. But this is a rare chance to try the original Wonder Film! It should work well in most B&W developers such as Rodinal or D-76 but might also provide interesting results with specialized developers. I've had good results when trying a diluted developer at a colder temperature with some drops of benzo.

   Some of my examples were shot with a Minolta 24 Rapid camera which makes 24x24mm square pictures using 35mm film. They were developed in Original M&B Promicrol for 9 min. @ 20°c.

Others were developed in Labeauratoire's Caffenol Concoction with 5 drops of Benzotriazole at 20ºc for 16 min. and shot with a Robot Royal 24.

    I recommend starting with an ISO of around 14 then expanding your experiments from there. There is no DX code on this film so you'll need a camera capable of manually setting the film speed. I have cut it down in to convenient rolls of 20 exposures ea. Perfect for experimenting with this rarely-seen emulsion. Get one now before it's gone forever.

    I'm keeping these rolls inexpensive by re-using old film cassettes and sticking on an artsy label I've made just so you know what's inside. Using a bulk loader I made rolls of approximately 20 exposures each, sometimes a bit more or less and as with most bulk loaded film the very last picture of each roll will not be exposed as that is where it is taped. This is not a stock product from Adox and I am not proporting to represent that fine company in any manner.