are you looking for more or less contrast? I have now played with Green, Blue, and "Green Latitude" and it seems to me that the "Green Latitude" has much richer/expanded midtones than the regular Green or Blue films.Originally Posted by DeBone75
I have only shot them in Homemade 8x10 Pinholes however so YMMV.
BTW I see you are in Erie, I live down in Corry, nice to meet you
"BTW I see you are in Erie, I live down in Corry, nice to meet you"
Hi. I'm asking cause I just bought a case, very cheap, of the full speed blue. I've seen the work of some that have used it and it looked pretty good. As with any film it takes some learning and tweeking to get it nailed down. I have not gotten the film yet but I'm pumped. I have about 150 sheets of the green and like it. I was telling someone yesterday that I like photography in that you can always find some sort of nitch. I shoot 8X10 and that is a nitch. I shoot 8X10 with X-ray film and that is a nitch in a nitch He shoots macro digital stereo. A nitch.
well the nice thing about X-Ray film is that it is so cheap that even if you don't like it you are not out much.
The blue film renders green foliage very dark, so right now in summer I prefer the Green Latitude, however once the leaves drop and the snow begins to fly the blue film we become my goto film
Is it possible to develop the blue film under red safelight?
"I believe there is nothing more disturbing than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept!" (Ansel Adams)
https://philippe.grunchec-photographe.over-blog.com/
According to Mortenson's 1939 book "The Negative", blue-sensitive and orthochromatic films should spend at least the first half of their development cycle in darkness; after that the emulsion becomes less sensitive to light and you can turn on a red safelight to view density buildup. Of course, YMMV; test first before you try it on your "Moonrise Over Hernandez"...
I do it with both the green and the red using Red LED lights. I have not noticed any fogging
This is some timely info. I have some sheets of green x-ray 8x10 film to develop and I'm glad I did not get rid of that red safelight.
Wallace what kind of change do you see in the winter with the blue sensitive film and also has anyone used filters with this stuff. I need to do some testing to see the effect of filters on x-ray film.
Jim
I would be carefull with a regular red safelight. My guess is you will be fine, but I know that some of them that use a regular light bulb behind a red filter can make other wavelengths of light as well. With the LEDs they only emit red light so you have no issues. This is a link to the blubs I use
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...t=MR16#E27-x24
Someone else from this foum posted a link to it a few weeks ago. I use the "wide" red bulb. And it lights up my bathroom/darkroom pretty good.
I have not used the Blue yet in winter conditions. I plan on using it because there will not be any leaves on the trees then and I don't like the way that the Blue film renders the green foliage so dark, and I much prefer the green latitude for the way it seperates the values in the leaves. As I understand it the medical use for the green latitude film is for things like chest X-Rays of your lungs so you get better seperation of the midtones.
Around here in the heart of the Lake Erie Snow Belts we get tons and tons of snow, and have it on the ground pretty much all winter so my thinking is the blue film will work great and it is a bit faster which is nice for low winter light levels
Last edited by Wallace_Billingham; 28-Aug-2009 at 07:03. Reason: add link
also I should mention that I found a webpage online from a google search
http://www.andrewsanderson.com/docs/X-rayfilm.pdf
This guy does a lot of urban night photography and found that the orange light from sodium street lighting did not expose X-Ray film either. On a whim I loaded up 2 sheets of the green film using some spillover light shining in the window from the street lamp outside my house in my downstairs bathroom. No other lights were on in my house and it was otherwise dark outside. The light did not directly hit the film but bounced off the white walls so that I could see once my eyes adjusted to the dark. That film also turned out fine.
While not a full replacement for regular panchromatic B&W film, its ability to be used under red led safelight, and to not to be seemingly effected by a little spillover light from a street lamp, could come in pretty handy on trips when you need to change/load film in holders in things like a Motel bathroom.
It was also quite interesting to try develop sheet film using a safelight, where you can see what is going on. I developed 6 sheets of it over the weekend in Diafine (which works great with X-Ray film BTW) and when I dropped the film into solution B after soaking in solution A, it very rapidly developed into an image after only about 5 seconds. I am sure development continued after that in the shadows and I left it in for the full 3 minutes but I am pretty certain that about 95% of the development happens in the first 5 seconds
Wallace thanks for the link on the red LED lights. In the past and still today when I develop my regular film I develop by inspection using Pyrocat-HD with a green safelight. The light is turned on and the film is checked when development is about 80% complete. I'll try a test sheet using the red safelight I have and this procedure to see what happens until the LED light arrives. Nice to know that in dim light you can develop x-ray film and I agree that this makes it great for those times when you develop in a motel. Heck I wonder if you could develop by campfire light? I can see it now trays on the table at the campsite!
Jim
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