Adox HR-50 – A Better Aerial Film

One night months ago, I was hunched over my laptop, feeding my film appetite, looking for a store that had Adox HR-50 in stock. I had just stumbled across it while looking for new stocks to try, and I had read that it was not a respool, but a further modification of the ubiquitous Agfa Aviphot 80. As an aviation fanatic, I love using aerial films, so a film that is more than just rebadged Aviphot? Sign me right up!

Even though there’s usually a lot of hype around newish film stocks, this seems to have gone under the radar, pun intended, compared. I Thankfully, on one of my go-to lab stores, I saw it – a photo of a simple, perhaps even boring, orange labeled roll. Maybe that’s why it’s overlooked? A few days later, that roll was in my hands, the greyish leader, characteristic of Agfa Aviphot, dangling out the end. Not wasting any time, I loaded up my Voskhod with the film, added its accompanying ZhS-17 yellow filter, and jumped into the car to hunt for shots!

After driving around a bit, I ended up coming to a local reservoir that I like to walk around in. It was right around golden hour, to give the film the best chance possible, and got to work.

Nice! It’s an IR-sensitive aerial film for sure, with the bright highlights and sharp contrasts. But what really impressed me at first look, is how smooth the grain is, and how much fine detail the scene has. Dare I say, the resolution is beautiful? I’m not ashamed to admit, just seeing this scan, sold me on HR-50. Continuing on the trail…

Even directly in the sun, the highlights aren’t blown out. On this secondary pumping station, the stonework is very clearly visible. I really like how well this film handles bright light.

It was a decently busy afternoon, so I was able to get a nice wide view of the trail in this shot. With all the light, I love how well the film resolved the pebbles in the trail and the grass blades nearby, and the various textures and patterns in general in this shot.

Of course, direct sunlight at golden hour is easy. So why not something a bit more complicated? There’s always scenes that I really want to photograph, but have more complex lighting.

I’ve been trying to make this shot of the train for a while, in different conditions, and I think this is what I am finally looking for. This was near midday, so the light was very harsh, but the shaded side of the passenger car still has some of that corrugated metal texture, and even the color stripe is discernable. It’s a pleasant surprise to see this much shadow detail. My favorite photography subjects are architecture and architectural abstractions, so this improved shadow resolution is very useful to have.

For fun, I tried to overexpose a couple of scenes, in order to bring out some more shadow detail.

These two scenes are separated by a single stop, I spot metered for the highlights in this case. Despite the additional exposure, it remains relatively tame overall. It gives a bit more visual detail to the shadows, and depending on what look I’d want to achieve, I think I could utilize either.

Now, 1 stop overexposure is small. Why not bump it to around 2? In this case, I metered for the shadows instead of the highlights, which based on my rough math and light meter readings, was about a 2 stop difference.

Not so bad for an aerial film. The highlights aren’t too washed out compared to what they could’ve been. My impression is that HR-50 handles overexposure rather well. Adox claims that their treatment reduces the gamma of the original Aviphot 80 base, which should give it more mid-grey tones and better detail in the shadows. It’s hard to assess the exact extent of its effect, but I can believe it based on these shots.

Of course, nothing is perfect in life, and the elephant in the room here is the speed. ISO 50 is of course more challenging to use than the 200 and 400 speed films more commonly available. Since we had record amounts of rain this spring, inevitably, my film addiction made me take the camera out during some overcast days.

Darker, as to be expected, but with plenty of rich, fine detail, and not a ton of inky blacks. For me, the contrast lends action and artistry to an otherwise dull day, and the resolution is superb. I really like how well the reflections in the scene turned out, both in the water and on the glass of the skyscrapers, it makes it feel more like a captured place & time. Of the shots on this roll, this is one of my favorites.

On another dreary day, I ended up taking it with me while walking around downtown. At the base of a university building, I tried to capture the way the windows played with the light and caused reflections.

I really like the depth of the shadows framing the windows here, as well as the resolution of the mirror reflections in the building. The shot ended up exactly the way I wanted it to be; proper exposure goes a long way with this film.

Same thing with this shot of the highway, which I took together later that day. The sharpness of the film helps counteract what would otherwise feel rather dull in this lighting.

Even though my Voskhod only opens to f/2.8, in all the cases, I didn’t find it challenging to capture these shots. The speed is quite usable without needing to push, and I was limiting myself to handheld shots only, a shutter speed of 1/60 or faster. With a tripod I wouldn’t worry at all. This is definitely usable all around, in my opinion.

By the way, I don’t shoot a ton of street, but I liked how it captures human skin tones. On another day, while eating lunch, I took this scene of some people by the corner.

I was impressed by how much detail was preserved on people. On the guy in the center, some tendons under his skin is visible. I hear that higher contrast is trendy for street photography, but for something more true to life, I really liked HR-50 here.

But unfortunately, that was it! With a final street shot ruined by shaky hands, my counter hit 0, and it was time to send it to my local lab. However, the world of film moves surprisingly fast, and in the meantime, Leica announced a B&W film, also ISO 50….which some have found to most likely be respooled Adox HR-50. I wonder if writing this makes me a hipster of some sort.

After a week of waiting, and wading through my images, my impression is that Adox HR-50 falls into a nice middle ground for me. Not everyone likes high contrast films – though I do – but I think it balances contrast with shadow detail well. You can overexpose it and not completely blow out the highlights, and meter for the highlights without turning all the shadows into an inky soup. And, the images it makes are so beautifully rich in detail.

This also has the effect, in my eyes, of being much more approachable of a film, than all the other direct respools of Agfa’s Aviphot 80 out there. Perhaps that is the most important thing – HR-50 gives me a little more leeway, for how I want to approach a scene, while retaining a look that I like. I can afford to take more difficult shots than I would otherwise, or experiment more than I would previously feel comfortable doing.

While ISO 50 can be a bit challenging to use daily, I didn’t personally find it a problem. When I shot it in overcast conditions, I think it made some great images, handling the light well with the right exposure. If you aren’t afraid to use slow films, then I think this does well across all sorts of lighting situations.

After sitting down at my laptop, this time to write this review instead of buying more film – that comes later – and going through my shots and my thoughts, I’ve come to love this film even more. I can understand why Leica chose to respool this film, over the other options, for their new B&W stock. It slots into an interesting niche, that seems surprising devoid of alternatives; a film that I think can both excite new photographers, and interest experienced ones.

Lastly, the ease of handling wasn’t bad. This film light pipes like all aerial films, so be careful when loading and developing. I loaded in a dark corner of the house, but I lost a couple of shots either then or from the lab dev. Still, I’ve seen worse. What was nice was that loading was easy, the leader went into the spool, and caught the teeth quite easily, despite the thin base.

All in all, I’d say HR-50 is for you, if you want more tonal separation, maybe a little more drama, in your B&W, but don’t want your shots to resemble the surface of Giedi Prime. If you’re on the fence, maybe you’ve had a bad experience with other aerial or high contrast films, I’d say, still, give it a shot – it’s always worth a try, and it might just surprise you.

Something that I didn’t get to try yet, but I’d like to next time, is filtration with a red or IR filter. Adox has some example photos shot in IR, and claims that the film works well with strong filters. I definitely felt great pairing it with a yellow filter, at least. Maybe we can make some Giedi Prime-esque shots after all.

Thank you for reading! What do you think about this film?
Come find me on Flickr along with all the other photos here.

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