Aerial Roll Film

[BarryWilkinson]

Does anyone know of a source of 5" or 9 1/2" Aerial Roll Film?

Barry

 

[Konical]

Good Morning, Barry,

Try the large-format film section on E-Bay. There's a seller who offers, if I recall correctly, the 9 and 1/2 inch size. I think some messages have been posted here about cutting and using the stuff.

Konical

 

[Foto Ludens]

if you are looking for the new stuff, try B&H... it might be a special order, but I remember seeing it on their website. If you are looking for old stock, I second the ebay recommendation.

hope this helps,

André

 

[BarryWilkinson]

Konical and Andre,

Thanks for your replies. I did do some searching but I guess this is not the ideal time of year to search ebay. I'll try early in the New Year (and B&H).

Best wishes for the New Year

Barry

 

[John Bartley]

Try this link :

Dead Link Removed

cheers

 

[BarryWilkinson]

Try this link :

Dead Link Removed

cheers

Thanks John, I think my searching techniques need some work!

I have also found the posts regarding cutting, thanks Konical.

Looking at the spec sheets, the aerial film is almost half the thickness of sheet LF film. It is 3.9mil, sheet film of the same type is 7mil. Has anyone experienced problems due to this? e.g. fitting in film holders or focus issues.

Barry

 

[Woolliscroft]

You might try asking the Landscape modelling Unit at Cambridge University where they get theirs. I know they still use it. I am afraid that I use 6 x 7 now for archaeological flying.

David.

 

[Foto Ludens]

Yeah, I use the very thin APHS with no focus problems at all... and I do tend to shoot at f/11 or f/16 (on a 305mm lens).

André

 

[John Bartley]

Looking at the spec sheets, the aerial film is almost half the thickness of sheet LF film. It is 3.9mil, sheet film of the same type is 7mil. Has anyone experienced problems due to this? e.g. fitting in film holders or focus issues.

Barry

Barry,

All the photos (such as they are :rolleyes: ) in my gallery are from PlusXAero. I cut it to 8", use the 9.5" width for the 10" dimension and load it into regular 8x10 holders. It is a very stiff backing and because it curls into the emulsion naturally, it remains flat and tight in the holders.

cheers

 

[BarryWilkinson]

Barry,

All the photos (such as they are :rolleyes: ) in my gallery are from PlusXAero. I cut it to 8", use the 9.5" width for the 10" dimension and load it into regular 8x10 holders. It is a very stiff backing and because it curls into the emulsion naturally, it remains flat and tight in the holders.

cheers

Thanks John, Your photo's are nice and sharp, thanks for pointing them out.

Thanks to all for your help, I'm going to try some Aerial film soon.

Regards

Barry

 

[mikepry]

The man on ebay (Ed aka mr. photo), is a real gent. I purchased some of this film and did some extensive testing with it running it through the BTZS programs and it came up very slow. Really slow. I sent my curves to Phil Davis and after a few email exchanges we came up to the conclusion its okay but not great. It does have a little more B&F than I'd like to see and it's worst case scenario would be a low contrast subject exposed and developed for Palladium.

Here is what Phil said about it...."Your curves are a little lumpy and spaced a bit erratically but it appears that the proper speed is between 32 and 40, perhaps a little closer to 40 so that’s a reasonable number to use in the PowerDial. The film is not excessively contrasty but the fog level is high and the curves exhibit a rather pronounced shoulder that might be a problem (reduced highlight contrast) for Pt/Pd negatives of flat subjects. These are drawbacks but the film is certainly worth a good field trial. The worst case situation will be a low contrast subject exposed and developed for Palladium; if that produces satisfactory image quality the film is probably worth using."

I haven't gotten around to a serious field test with it but I know allot of people use it and like it.

Good Luck!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Have you tested filter factors with these films? My impression was that aero films had extended red sensitivity for higher speed with a red or yellow filter to cut through haze, so it might make these films attractive for landscapes. So even if you were getting an EI of 40, you might be getting a filter factor of 4x instead of 8x, hypothetically, with a 25A filter.

 

[John Bartley]

When I first tried the Aero film, I shot the first negative at the recommended ISO of (IIRC) 100. The negative was very thin, very lacking in contrast. Shortly after that, MikePry was good enough to post his findings on speed for this film and I adjusted accordingly. His post was very much appreciated !!! I wish I was able to discuss film speed with some intelligence, but I've never done any tests. All I can say is that I now meter at an ISO of 25 and I develop in D23 for five minutes and then in borax for four. I have yet to have a negative that doesn't show (to my inexperienced eyes) detail in every portion. My exposure times on Gr2 AZO (using a 10W halogen lamp at 24" above the frame) run from 75 to 150 seconds. I have a feeling that the metered ISO could be lower yet without hurting the detail in the highlights and without affecting the contrast. I'm wondering though if I will be able to get enough contrast from this film for successful albumen printing.

cheers

 

[nze]

Hello

I use this film for some of my work , all the still life 2004 series was made with it.
http://www.c-nze.com/pages/st2004.htm and I just print them in palladium/platinum. I find the fog a little high but not so problematic . The probelm with platinum was to find the good developer and I find that it give great negative with Kodak D7 (pyro genol ) . I also use it with rodinal 1+25 or even 1+12 for N+2 and also with Ilford PQ . (But the better is the pyro genol)

For sure these are long exposure neg and the reciprocity effect surely help me to get higher contrast negative.

I also use it for some landscape and the negative are not so problematic to print in PD/PT with the help of little contrasting agent in this case.

I find it to be a good film even if it I will not compare it to FP4, Acros or TMax 100.
Hope this help

 

[mikepry]

I talked to Ed after I purchased this film and he told me it wasn't the usual aerographic emulsion for this particular film but rather a custom formulated emulsion for a certain customer. That's why the !SO of 200 doesn't really apply. Plus, aerographic and pictoral ISOs' are a whole seperate entity unto their own as well.

If anyone uses the BTZS Win Plotter I'd be happy to send along my data.

 

[nze]

Hello I forget to add that I use this at 32 Iso with Pyro and 64 with other developer.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I talked to Ed after I purchased this film and he told me it wasn't the usual aerographic emulsion for this particular film but rather a custom formulated emulsion for a certain customer.

Military/government? Who else could order enough aero film from Kodak to get them to make a custom emulsion?

 

[mikepry]

Dave,
That would be my guess. He said he had bought a huge lot of it and there isn't much left. I do plan on using it but what perplexes me is what type of reciprocity adjustments do I apply to it. I know, w/o a doubt, I will enter extended and downright long exposure times and would be at a complete loss due to the unique nature of this film, as to what adjustments to apply. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I may even email Phil Davis and see what he has to say about it.

 

[John Bartley]

... I will enter extended and downright long exposure times and would be at a complete loss due to the unique nature of this film, as to what adjustments to apply. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Hi Mike,

I'm sure you've read this page :

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/documents/3a/0900688a802b093a/ti0073.pdf

, but if not, this following is an extract :

Reciprocity Characteristics
No exposure or development time adjustments are required
for exposure times from 1,000 second to 1⁄100 second. At
1⁄10,000 second, adjust the lens aperture by +1⁄2 stop and
increase the development time by 10 percent. At 1⁄10 second,
adjust the lens aperture by +1⁄2 stop.

I think the 1/10'th is a typo and should read 1/1000'th. Based on what I read here, I would guess, and would appreciate a more informed opinion, that the only adjustment would be for bellows extension unless your exposures are more than 15 minutes?

EDIT : I changed the 1/10,000 to 1/10 (ooops!)

cheers

 

[Foto Ludens]

John, it may very well be 1/10,000th, since that is the speed of some flash strobes. That would mean it if you shoot with a flash, you may have to expose for an extra 1/2 stop.

Interesting that the reciprocity failure enter as low as 1/10...

André

 

[Foto Ludens]

John, I see where you made the typo, no problem... but as I read your quote, I still see no adjustment from 1,000th to 100th, which means that 1/10th would indeed need an adjustment.

Think about it this way:

If the film is exposed at or between 1/1,000th or 1/100th, no adjustment is needed. If faster (especially at 1/10,000th or above) or slower (especially at 1/10th or below) add 1/2 a stop. I'm sure that the added time would need to grow exponentially as exposures decrease below 1/10,000th or increase above 1/10th.

Heck, I'd just follow the reciprocity table for regular plus-x for a minute long exposure an see how badly underexposed the film is. Might be worth a test sheet, in my opinion.

André

 

[mikepry]

Actually on the PDF from Kodak it reads "No adj. required from 1000 sec to 1/100th second." It doesn't say 1/1000th so does that mean 1000 seconds as in 16.6 minutes?

But then it says open up 1/2 stop for 1/10th second exposure.

Doesn't 1/10th second fall in between 1000(literal) seconds and 1/100th of a second? I'm getting confused.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Do people shoot aerial photographs at slower than 1/10 sec.? I suspect that once you're outside the film's intended purpose, you're on your own with testing.

 

[mikepry]

I know what you're talking about Dave, I was thinking the same thing! There is a reciprocity test one can do but it is a real pain in the but....major pain. This was one of the reasons I haven't done any serious stuff with this fim...yet.

 

[Donald Qualls]

My experience has been that about 90% of "conventional" grain films have the same reciprocity curve -- what I've come to call a 3 for 2 relationship. That means that, once you leave the reciprocal range of light intensities, you need three times the exposure time for each stop, instead of twice the time (with fixed aperture). If your film starts to need correction at 1/10 with 1/2 stop, you'd be around 1 second to need one stop; that means a time metered as one second would need to be three seconds, and every additional stop of time needed would be 3x as long.

Many manufacturer's charts look more complicated than this, because they also take into account the loss of speed from decreased development to compensate the contrast increase caused by low intensity reciprocity failure; best I can suggest there is shoot two (since this is all sheet film by the time you're using it anyway), and reserve one until you've seen the other. That *is* why film holders have two dark slides, right?