film and its black poly-whatever bag

[E S]

Hi all,

I'm curious about having film in contact with the black poly-whatever bag that it comes in. Specifically, I only have one box of film at the moment, and only one empty black bag / envelope / whatever. If I want to vary my development times for N, N+1, N-1, it would be best to keep the film separated, obviously.

At first I thought, "hey, self, the little packet of film has two cardstock liners in the little envelope of film -- bag-cardstock-film-cardstock-bag -- and you could use those two cardstock pieces to separate the three different categories. Genius!"

But then I realized that that arrangement would give me bag-film-card-film-card-film-bag, and I started wondering if having film in direct contact with its little black bag/envelope would be such a good idea. Surely if it wasn't a problem the manufacturers wouldn't bother with the card in the first place?

So, do I need to cut myself a couple pieces of cardstock to put on the top and bottom of the whole mess, to separate the film and the bag? Thanks for the help.

Elizabeth

[lenser]

Card stock may be a contaminant problem. As with some matte boards, it may not be stable and contain sulfur or other chemicals that could react with the film. I would only use the kind of cards that actually come with the film since the manufacturer surely (I would hope) must take this into account.

As to the plastic bags, I have no actual knowledge, but since the film edges would have been in contact with the plastic anyway, I'm guessing that it is stable chemically, but that it might cause some rubbing or scratching of the film surface since it could slide across the film a bit compared to the cards.

[Daniel Stone]

do this:

keep track of your exposures in a small notebook(DO NOT LOSE THIS NOTEBOOK). Make sure your holders are #'d(each side a different #). You don't HAVE to shoot your holders in numerical order, but it helps, after each exposure, log your shot info, and the holder #.

Then when you download your holders, keep the downloading IN THE SAME ORDER AS YOU SHOT THEM. I load ++++,--, and (N) all in the same box. no problems so far for me. Easier than toting around multiple boxes(unless you're shooting a lot, and need multiple boxes for lots of film to download, in the same manner as described above)

-Dan

EDIT:

scrap the cardboard, keep the bag IMO. Some people ditch the bag, I've found it helps to keep the sheets from sliding around in box, and it helps to protect them from the cardboard, which sometimes isn't too smooth.