Monday, September 19, 2016

More X-Ray FIlm Thoughts

I extended my development on the last  X-Ray film sheets to 10 minutes which helped a bit with the density of the neg while adding minor contrast. Next time out I will try exposing the film at 10 ASA and and develop at 10 minutes (in a tray) to see how that turns out. Eventually if I use this type of film to do a portrait series I may confine myself to the 1 sided emulsion X-Ray film I learned of a while back as that will scratch less. I have some 8x10 sheets of that film in my freezer so will give those a try before ordering the more expensive 14x17 size.

I developed this last batch of X-Ray stuff under a dim yellow darkroom safelight (online recommendation) which did not fog the film. It was a rather strange experience, one of the bonuses of X-Ray film I guess, they are not sensitive to that type of light.

Even when the negs are underexposed you get a cool warm tone Ambrotype feel to the images when they are washed in a black plastic washer. I will try making some contact prints on RC paper in the coming days from these negs.

Here is a link to the various 8x10 X-Ray films I am going to play with, the Carestream stuff is the one sided emulsion style mentioned above.
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/02/bought-3-types-of-x-ray-film.html

Underexposed X-Ray negative
Badly underexposed X-Ray negative