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

[Jim Noel]

If I understand correctly you have however agitated the bath in both cases.
By agitation do you mean lifting one side of the tray?
And how long was the development with HC110 so diluted?
I also use HC110 but diluted 1:50, for 10 minutes.

To avoid scratching, in case of small specimens (around 4 by 4 cm) I made a holder as follows.

I cut two strips of plexiglas of 5 by 100 mm about 3 mm thick, and passed a file on one edge of each at about 45°.
I then glued the two strips on a sheet of plexiglas in such a way to create a guide on which to place the specimen.
The distance between the strips is a bit smaller than the specimen, so this lays a bit curved.
The sheet is then immersed in the developing bath which covers the whole device and the curvature of the sample allows clear circulation of te developer..
The agitation can be provided by lifting one side of the tray or lifting the sheet throug a handle I glued on it.
I hope to have been clear.
I found no problem with this size of specimen, and, given the stiffness of the xray film it could work also for larger sizes, may be up to the full sheet 18 by 24 cm I use.

Agitation is performed by lifting 3 sides of the tray for each cycle.
My times will probably not suit you as my negatives are designed to make salt prints. 4-5 minutes at 75 deg.F gives the the DR I need. If I was going to print on silver gelatin paper or cyanptype or lakitype i would dilute even further.
I see no need for holders, or glass in the bottom of the tray. Careful handling at all stages eliminates scratches. When I learned to develop film in the 1930's all films had very soft emulsions so proper handling was a must.

[andrewch59]

If you use the plastic developing trays made these days they have grooves in them, the developer tends to flow faster down these grooves when agitation is initiated, causing uneven development. Also the trays have bumps in them from the moulds, so a protective sheet has been necessary to stop scratching of xray film. I put a sheet of cleaned xray film down over the imperfections and only occasionally find scratches.

[koraks]

Yeah, I think it depends on the tray you use. Mine have little bumps which are remnants of the injection molding process. There's one right in the middle of each of my flat-bottomed trays and it scratches the emulsion badly if I don't put glass over it. My agitation scheme is similar to Jim's and I use double sided film. With film such as ektascan br/a flipping the film shouldn't be necessary.

[ImSoNegative]

the best trays I have used are the plastic food storage trays you can buy at the dollar store, they are about 5 dollars a piece, when I shoot single emulsion x ray film I just use the btzs tubes.

[andrewch59]

Developing with the trays is something I particularly enjoy. Its quite therapeutic, gently rocking the tray waiting for that image to appear and then deciding in the faint red glow if its time to halt development or wait just a little bit longer to find that little bit more detail. When I flip the green film it always seems to have a lot more on one side than the other, on the half speed blue both sides seem to have the same amount of detail.

[towolf]

So, I got my first flash ever this week. It’s a studio flash that can put out f32 at 1 meter with a softbox attached.

I wanted to try it out and was pretty puzzled that my Sekonic readings for the relative power of the flash and my big continuous fluorescent lightbox did not seem to match at all.

Of course I did the tests with cheap Fuji x-ray film to start with and where I had equal power from two sides the flash side just didn’t register. It seemed to be something like 1.5 stops under.

So today, I did a 2x2 test matrix with Foma 100 and Fuji HR-E 30 with equal power and then 3:1 power according to my light meter. I rated the Fuji at EI 25 from my earlier stuff.



What was completely new to me that apparently there is reciprocity failure also at extremely short exposures? The flash barely shows on the x-ray film. Is this an effect of my rating it at EI 25? Is is off perhaps?

[seezee]

What is the color temp of the new strobe? Perhaps it's too warm for the x-ray film.

[towolf]

No, I think it’s pretty cold. 5600K. My tubes are also 5500K.

[Ian Gordon Bilson]

I use a guillotine cutter, and I am always afraid of hurting me when operating in the dark, and even under deep red light, since I must press the film quite near the cutting area..
I am considering the purchase of a rotary cutter, but I do not know if all cutters cut cleanly the Xray film, which seem to me quite strong.
Even my guillotine cuts only fairly; I must press the blade against the cutting edge to cut and not bend the film.
Does rotary cutter behave cleanly?

My rotary cutter makes a very clean cut on film/paper. Meopta brand -common in Europe, probably unknown in the US.
Much cheaper than the Rototrim,but similar design.
The difference,at least with my design,is that the cutting head compresses the leading edge just before the wheel cuts.
On a guillotine, the cutting action on the blade tends to skew the medium. For heavy card to thin paper,works fine.
For films-rotary almost essential imho.

[mdm]

I have a rotary cutter for paper but was unable to use it for cutting a roll of aerographic film as it would have to be threaded from the wrong end under the plastic compression thing after every cut. A nightmare with floppy aero film. So I had to get a guillotine cutter for that, clearance on trademe about $30, it has a neat little arm that descends ahead of the blade and which holds the film still. If you use a rotary cutter its a good idea to tape a sheet of office paper around the plastic holder/compression thing to minimise potential scratching and to ease the paper in and out as it will hold the film down on the useable area.