How does X-ray film render clouds & sky?
How does X-ray film render clouds & sky?
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
John, I've done some minimal testing with my green sensitive film. Unfiltered it looks good. I've used a #11 and it bumps contrast and cloud separation some. I have not done a lot of work with sky in the images. Carbon printing and clear skies is very unforgiving.
I was looking forward to the old time "blank sky' look.
In some of my first tests I was surprised to see separation of cloud wisps in the blue sky on the negative.
I haven't printed those account I scratched the @@$#2!! out of them, so I can't say how easy or difficult it would be to see them in a silver print. I presume some additional development would bring them out without sacrificing the rest of the scene.
Blue sensitive x-ray film should blow out the sky.
I work with x-ray imaging and just bought a box of 14x17 blue from ebay for around eighty dollars. I bought it a couple of months ago for a project and can't remember the exact price but it was really cheap. I think it's 50 sheets in the box. I exposed ten sheets last week (x-rays) and so far it's excellent film. It comes in both green and blue sensitive as well as full and half speed.
I just checked and 14x17 is $72 / 100 sheet box in both green or blue full speed. (No connection to seller) It's shipped from the US. I need higher contrast and ran it in 1:1 D-19 and got excellent tonal separation and very dense blacks which I wanted but it should run OK in HC110 or pyro. I did scans of some small subjects around ten inches in size and scanned them at 300 dpi at a size of 70 inches and the grain was what i would consider moderate which I would expect in D19.
You can't get film much cheaper.
The film is sensitive to X ray, blue and blue violet with a hint of green. Most of the exposure is from the "Intensifying Screens", the Xray imaging is no more than 10%
of the exposure. In the Navy I was doing clinical Xray for a time and if we ever had to use a paper film carrier for flexing the film, we had to increase the exposure by at least 10 times.
Lynn
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