Use of X-ray film: technical discussion with example images

[SergeiR]

Detergents, Photo flo and LFN are all surfactants so they all have the quality of causing water to sheet off surfaces.

yup. Basically anything that can change surface tension of water seems to work nicely. PhotoFlo , i guess, is more clear solution than our average soapy things at households, but i have not yet seen much of difference to switch back. Plus i can always use same stuff to wash off basin and dishes afterwards Win win..

[Tin Can]

I don't have wife, no room.

Kodak sunk their own ship.

I kept running out of it and there is no longer any stores in Dallas or nearby that carry stuff. And i don't have huge storage space its bad enough i can't park car in garage with all the … stuff.. i have - costumes, light stands , camera bits and pieces My wife is patient about it, but i don't want to push it Or she will stop posing for me

[towolf]

So, with my mediocre results shooting on some mystery Kodak x-ray film (seems like blotchy patches of low contrast), I tried stripping the emulsion on the other side. And trying to be systematic I took three frames and stripped the back and the front on one each.



This is with fixed scanner exposure. The backside is really blurry. Viewing the front+back sheet this creates areas of reduced contrast. So not local micro-contrast, but impaired medium radius contrast. Like a halo.

Here’s a GIF that switches between kind of equalized versions



I think I will strip always from now on. I found a method that is really quick. Take a tray, put two sheets of toilet paper on the bottom. Soak the TP with 3-4ml of bleach. Drop the sheet on top of that and move sheet around with gloved fingers. The emulsion is stripped in 10-20 seconds, no mess, no tape, no glass plate. Just rinse of the back first.

[StoneNYC]

yup. Basically anything that can change surface tension of water seems to work nicely. PhotoFlo , i guess, is more clear solution than our average soapy things at households, but i have not yet seen much of difference to switch back. Plus i can always use same stuff to wash off basin and dishes afterwards Win win..

What about the effects on archival, isn't dish soap a corrosive of some kind?

[StoneNYC]

I kept running out of it and there is no longer any stores in Dallas or nearby that carry stuff. And i don't have huge storage space its bad enough i can't park car in garage with all the … stuff.. i have - costumes, light stands , camera bits and pieces My wife is patient about it, but i don't want to push it Or she will stop posing for me

Running out? I have an edwal brand dropper and over 3 years and never run out, only getting close now, I have a whole bottle of kodak stuff, I expect it to last me my entire life....

[SergeiR]

Running out? I have an edwal brand dropper and over 3 years and never run out, only getting close now, I have a whole bottle of kodak stuff, I expect it to last me my entire life....

When i am "on the roll" - i shoot 100-200 sheets in a month of 8x10 alone. Add there some occasional roll film and stuff. And i don't reuse final rinse solutions (only fixer is reused). So yep. I did ran out of it on times when it was not convenient.

As of archival - i am not sure i care for negatives to be here in 50 years, b/c i know i would not be. But i know that i don't see any problems with film and X-ray film that been done 2 years ago (just re-scanned some stuff from 1.5 years ago recently). So - who knows. I prefer to keep huge tiffs of my scans, knowing full well that i can print out 8x10 negative from them and storage is far less consuming (that said - i do keep good negatives, and it eats up space like crazy ()

[towolf]

Here’s two more examples of stripped versus unstripped. Is it my film (pretty much unidentified: it says Definix Medical on the envelope and KODAK XDM on the edge) that exhibits this large blurry cross-talk from the rear emulsion? Some people here said that stripping gives insignificant benefit. Are they using more modern film?

[Vaughn]

Unstripped, x-ray film has never given me sharp carbon prints.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Excellent examples, towolf.

[Tav Walraven]

towolf....

I knew there had to be another great use for toilet paper! Shooting 11x14, I'll probably use some large 3M paper towels I have in the darkroom and soak 'em with bleach and try your method. Thanks for the images dancing back and forth as it is obvious the backing takes away such a large degree of apparent sharpness. It appears that a slight bump in exposure might make up for the removed backing, eh? Thanks for the post.