travelling in heat with film?

[h2oman]

I'm headed out next week for a road trip. I begin with a 4 day river trip on which I'll take my camera, but I want to leave some loaded film holders in my car, which will most likely be parked in the sun of western Colorado all four days. I was thinking that if I put the film holders in a small cooler (without ice) and wrapped it in a down sleeping bag that might keep it from getting too hot during the days. Anyone with thoughts and/or experience?

Thanks,
Gregg Waterman

[Preston]

Here's what I've done:

Put the film in a ziplock freezer bag.
Place in a cooler with a couple of well-frozen gel ice packs.
Use a cord to secure the lid so that it seals well.
Put the whole shebang in a down bag and tie it off so no outside air can get in.

Don't put it in the trunk. Just a thought, if you have one of those reflective windshield shades. lay it over the bag to keep any direct sun off of it.

Whether this will last four days or not, I don't know. It depends upon how hot it gets and whether or not the vehicle is in shade at least some of the time.

Have a great trip!

--P

[joselsgil]

Greg, you might want to switch to a large cooler with blue ice. Even then, it will only last a day. If your car has tinted windows or you can shield most of the interior of the car. That might help. Leave the windows cracked open just a bit, to let the hot air from the interior escape.

I once left a kodak developing thermometer in my old Ford Ranger pick-up truck, for less than 5 min. while I unloaded the truck. When I went to retrieve it. The temp read 110 degrees. This was during a warm sunny Southern California day, with no shade on the vehicle. I was really surprised just how quickly a vehicle's interior heats up.

Good luck.

Jose

[Brian Stein]

I once left a kodak developing thermometer in my old Ford Ranger pick-up truck, for less than 5 min. while I unloaded the truck. When I went to retrieve it. The temp read 110 degrees. This was during a warm sunny Southern California day, with no shade on the vehicle. I was really surprised just how quickly a vehicle's interior heats up.


Yep. It takes about an hour to heat up fully. With ambient temperatures in the 90s your car interior can hit 130s-150s. Cracking the windows slows the process but does not eliminate it. This is why kids and pets die from heatstroke. If you want some science and graphs look at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/116/1/e109.

Solutions:
1. take the film with you and load it later.
2. bury the film 18" underground (only half joking!)
3. if you have to leave it in the car: shade, shade, shade.
window tinting will also act to delay peak temperatures, but if the car is in full sunlight all day also wont cut it.
ice box ideas also will delay temp rises: if you get really obsessional about it (box in box in down bag) it may be sufficient.

[Vaughn]

Find a local store or office willing to store a small ice chest inside for the four days? Perhaps the rafting company (if you are going that route) might have a local office they work out of.

[Richard Raymond]

Gregg,
I use a 2 cooler system for keeping film cold over multiple days when I am in the desert. I use a small cooler with my film and holders. I put some of the "blue ice" containers in with the film. I put this cooler inside a larger cooler. In the larger cooler I put block ice and dry ice. The dry ice will keep the block ice from melting too quickly. Keep as much sun as possible out of the car by using sun shades on both the front and rear windows.
Ric

[Frank Petronio]

I suspect that you would really have to cook the film over a longer period to see any ill effect. Has anyone here ever actually fogged their film from desert heat in recent memory? (With modern emulsions and simple precautions like keep the film covered.)

[Rick A]

RV supply and auto parts stores, maybe even truck stops, sell 12 volt coolers for a reasonable price. Just plug it in and it acts as a refridgerator. I believe some even have thermostats.

[Brian C. Miller]

I haven't had a problem, myself. But I haven't stashed the film in a car.

Hang on, I can run an experiment. I do have a roll or two of 120 that I left in my Jeep for a while.

[BetterSense]

What objective, scientific basis is there for worrying about this? I mean, does anyone have any actual data, that shows what real effects there are from ~130F temperatures for typical periods of time, on color and/or black-and-white film? Has anyone, including film manufacturers, done any tests on this?

[Drew Wiley]

All the above ideas work well enough, but the best insulation I've found is not an
ice chest but a good goosedown jacket. And there's plenty of evidence from the
big boys like Kodak about heat potentially messing with film, especially color film.
Lots of us have learned this the hard way, anyway.

[Frank Petronio]

I know my film lab guy, who does a lot of E6, which should be more sensitive than B&W and C41, says he has never seen it, even from all the landscape photographers who send them their film. Maybe his clientele is more careful, but with 30-years of lab experience you'd think you'd see it once if it was really such a problem.

I have had 6-year out of date film separate in the emulsion but I don't know the film storage history, I suspect it may have been damp more than hot. And I've had defective Ilford product. But otherwise I've never seen environmental damage done to my film, over MY 27-years of shooting.

Of course I don't leave film in the rear window shelf of car parked in Death Valley either....

[Drew Wiley]

Frank - why do you think 'pro' films sold at a premium were kept cold prior to sale, while amateur equivalents were not. The critical color balance was known to potentially shift. For certain kinds of work this is important. Care regarding heat in on
every color film tech sheet I've ever read. And even if the emulsion doesn't become
immediately affected, the life of the film does, and there's always a greater risk of the film buckling in the holders. Why ruin a trip through carelessness?

[Frank Petronio]

I'm not saying you don't throw a blanket over the film or try to park in the shade... but I wouldn't go through too much trouble over it either. I sure wouldn't waste money and stress out over it.

When I started doing commercial photography, the early 80s emulsions needed very subtle Wratten filtration to achieve neutral greys, you got wicked blue shadows, fabric moire, etc. The emulsions improved over time and by the mid-90s you almost never needed to use Wrattens because the film was so consistent and good. So nowadays I know the modern film is a lot more forgiving of environmental factors.

Sure Kodak and Fuji freeze and cold storage their film, and made a bigger fuss over the pro emulsions. They had to do something to convince you to pay double! But how was it structurally different than consumer film? It wasn't like they put extra dyes or silver into it -- instead you just had a more careful supply chain and they printed the emulsion numbers on the boxes. But nothing made EPN, EPP, EPN more expensive to manufacture than consumer film - it was only the handling and documentation.

Look at it the other way, don't you think Kodak and Fuji also strived to make their films less heat sensitive? It would be a big advantage for most consumers and stores... I doubt Walmart went out of their way to keep their Kodak Gold stock cool.

[Vaughn]

Frank -- FWIW...my understanding is that all color film shifts in color as it ages. Consumer film is shipped and sold without worrying about the shift -- as the customer would never know. Pro film is allowed to age to a certain point of known color shift, then stored cold to stop the aging process -- thus would have a consistent color balance from roll to roll.

[Pat Kearns]

When you get to CO go to Wal Mart and in the sporting goods section you can find a cooler made by California Innovations. There is one that has wheels and telescoping handle that holds about 24 beverage cans. The cooler is made to collapse and will fit in your luggage. Buy it, ziploc bags, water and ice. Put the film in the ziploc bags and the water on ice in the cooler. After a full day photographing in the heat your body will thank you for the cold water and your film will thank you for the cool storage.

[Drew Wiley]

Kodak has been crowing about pro Portra films being less heat sensitive than traditional
color neg films, and perhaps this applies to Ektar too, but at ten bucks a sheet I'm not
about to take any chances! Ice chests aren't that expensive. So I use them and park
in the shade.

[brianam]

Does anyone know about the affects of heat on infrared film?

I've shot a lot of IR in the desert, 35mm and 120 (not yet in sheets). Used HIE back-when, now I use the Rollei. I sometimes got a dimpled, gridded spot pattern embedded in the negatives. I thought it might have been a dimpled pressure plate in a 35mm camera (I have Olympus OM's, which have that) so I tried a Nikon F3 with a smooth plate. Still observed the issue, though less-so.

Was that the impact of heat? Is IR especially sensitive to it?

[Paul Kierstead]

I don't see how insulting the film can help over a long period. Without an ice pack, the interior of the cooler will rise to the ambient (for the cooler) temperature; this is inevitable. Heavy insulation will slow that rise, but it will also slow the decline. Unless you can slow it so much that it does not get to ambient before ambient declines, the peak temperature will be ambient. If the peak temperature goes by relatively quickly, the peak in the cooler will be less then peak ambient; however, it will still spend a great deal of time very hot; in fact, it will be much hotter in the cooler later in the day then even ambient is, unless some heat sensitive air exchange is used.

Adding something cold of course can change all that, until its heat sink ability is exhausted anyway.

[Frank Petronio]

At $10 a sheet plus processing on top of that, I'd just put it in a Brinks Armored Truck ;-)

Not to belabor the joy of beating the dead horse until it's further dead, but I am still waiting for someone to post evidence of heat damage to their film....

[h2oman]

Thanks for the input everyone. I should have specified that this will be B&W film. I've decided that I will try to take as much film with me on the river as I can, where I should be able to keep it from getting too hot. That will probably be 26 sheets loaded in 13 holders. I may throw another holder or two in the car, inside a down bag, shoot something with it and see how it looks when I develop it. This trip is more about seeing friends and family than photography, so I don't want to go to some of the lengths suggested above, although they may prove useful in the future.

The river trip is a "private," and we are going spartan, by river trip standards. I'll be paddling the smallest craft and someone else will be hauling someof my gear, so I have to be careful about loading them up with too much stuff! I'll be paying someone to shuttle my car and I suspect they'll park it in the sun. I don't think there will be any ohter choice.

I should have been clearer in asking if anyone had tried something simpler than ice - sorry!

[Kirk Keyes]

2. bury the film 18" underground (only half joking!)


I understand that Leni Riefenstahl did this with her 1960s Agfachrome when she was photographing the Nuba in Sudan.

I've been to the Colorado Plateau in for two weeks at a time during May/June and September/October many times, and I've never had film that appeared to be heat damaged. I left it in the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the original Fujichrome boxes and simply put a light colored sheet over the top of the box.

I think it will be fine. Especially B&W film.

[Andrew O'Neill]

You don't need to be too anal about film storage. I kept 8x10 film as well as infra-red film in a soft-sided cooler whilst photographing in Southern Saskatchewan a couple of summers ago. Temps hit 40C and was dryer than a nun's "you know what" :D . Just keep out of the sun, and Bob's yer uncle.

[rguinter]

I'm headed out next week for a road trip. I begin with a 4 day river trip on which I'll take my camera, but I want to leave some loaded film holders in my car, which will most likely be parked in the sun of western Colorado all four days. I was thinking that if I put the film holders in a small cooler (without ice) and wrapped it in a down sleeping bag that might keep it from getting too hot during the days. Anyone with thoughts and/or experience?

Thanks,
Gregg Waterman

Forget everything everyone else said in all the other posts.

Buy yourself a Yeti cooler.

http://www.yeticoolers.com/

Yes they cost a bundle.

Buy one big enough to fit all the film you intend to carry and a couple of deep frozen ice packs.

Won't matter a hoot whether the car hits 130F in 15-minutes or an hour with the windows cracked. The Yeti will keep your film cool the whole time.

Bob G.

[Frank Petronio]

travelling in heat with film?

Just noticed your title and my sophomoric sense of humor is trying to imagine a photographer in heat. With a film.

[brianam]

Bob, those coolers look awesome... but at that price I would expect them to have hidden refrigeration unit that draws power magically out of the air!

I use one of these for storing unexposed rolls or a 4x5 sheet film box inside my normal camping cooler: http://www.pelican.com/cases_detail.php?Case=1150
-brian

PS -- my question earlier in this thread had to do with exposed infrared film still inside the camera, or after unloading. (I've always been reluctant to put exposed film back into the cooler box. but maybe it doesn't matter?)

[Brian C. Miller]

OK, I just developed some film that I had been keeping in my Jeep for a year. Agfa Agfapan 100, expired in 2008, and shot a couple of days ago, developed in Ilford Ilfosol-3 1:14 for 7min.

No fog. The film is absolutely fine.

I haven't put any of the current crop of IR films in a hot environment. I think that the only times that my IR film was fogged was because of a development error.

[BetterSense]

I have a 35mm camera in my truck's glove box. In Texas heat, it should prove to be a good test when I get around to developing it a year or so from now.