I bought an 8x10 100 sheet box of this two and a half years ago. I experimented with it, and decided it was a go for using it for 4x5 photography enlarging no more than 3x. I perfected my film handling method for cutting, developing, and using this that same summer. However, I did not have a light weight camera to go with it, so started to build a camera to my specs to use with it. This is a double sided green sensitive xray film that works at an ei of around 50-100. I found that with careful use, which includes using a yellow filter and exposing at my smallest apertures to reduce the halation blur, I could get prints almost as sharp as a 2 1/4 negative enlarged to the same size. Slightly sharper than 35mm. This is at the cost of a not so linear film curve and the somewhat dreamy look it gives, due to halation.
I knew I should keep it in the freezer to make it last longer, but between reading reports about how it will work so many years after expiration, and noting the unremarkable results it gives, I wasn't worried since it's so cheap. The only place in our freezer my wife would let me use was where the old icemaker lived. The box was just too big to fit in there without modifying the freezer a bit and I didn't have any ziplock freezer bags big enough anyway.
A few days ago, I decided to test developing this xray film with my new MC-glycerol developer I've developed. I had test exposed a half dozen sheets outdoors the day before. I put them in quart sized freezer bags for processing, and mixed a 1:100 batch of developer, put that in the bag with the film and...meh...I saw some darkening near the border, but on clearing the fixer, I saw only a fain image against a dark background with clear edges. Oh no, my new developer has failed, I thought. So I tried another with a longer developer time, but pretty similar result. After messing around for a while, I decided to mix up a batch of D23 and try that. Same result. So I tried exposing some using my enlarger, but also got just a bit more than nothing.
Lesson is, this film really did expire two years after I bought it, when it was new. I tried using it last summer, and got thin results that I blamed on my developer. It really does need to be stored in the freezer after all. Will I get some more? Thinking about it. Using it for 4x5 does not excite me very much. All the additional work for hardly any improvement over 35mm. Also difficult to make quallity enlarged negatives from it at that size. My new plan is to think about building a simple 8x10 camera that would use it, and to do some alt printing directly from the negatives, which makes more sense. I have a Goertz Gold Dot dagor 9.5 inch lens that would work in hyperfocal box camera of some sort. That would be light weight enough to carry at times on my 4-5 mile hikes that I take for my woodland photography. I think I can tape sheets together using black electrical tape on the back side, and make spools to hold the film so it can be advanced through knobs sticking out on the bottom. Not planning on stupid film holders which are too heavy and expensive.
Even simpler would be a 3 shot pinhole camera in the shape of an equilateral triangle, with a sheet on each side, and a pinhole in every corner. This would be very easy to build and extremely light weight. I can use my other camera while waiting for those hour long exposures.
I knew I should keep it in the freezer to make it last longer, but between reading reports about how it will work so many years after expiration, and noting the unremarkable results it gives, I wasn't worried since it's so cheap. The only place in our freezer my wife would let me use was where the old icemaker lived. The box was just too big to fit in there without modifying the freezer a bit and I didn't have any ziplock freezer bags big enough anyway.
A few days ago, I decided to test developing this xray film with my new MC-glycerol developer I've developed. I had test exposed a half dozen sheets outdoors the day before. I put them in quart sized freezer bags for processing, and mixed a 1:100 batch of developer, put that in the bag with the film and...meh...I saw some darkening near the border, but on clearing the fixer, I saw only a fain image against a dark background with clear edges. Oh no, my new developer has failed, I thought. So I tried another with a longer developer time, but pretty similar result. After messing around for a while, I decided to mix up a batch of D23 and try that. Same result. So I tried exposing some using my enlarger, but also got just a bit more than nothing.
Lesson is, this film really did expire two years after I bought it, when it was new. I tried using it last summer, and got thin results that I blamed on my developer. It really does need to be stored in the freezer after all. Will I get some more? Thinking about it. Using it for 4x5 does not excite me very much. All the additional work for hardly any improvement over 35mm. Also difficult to make quallity enlarged negatives from it at that size. My new plan is to think about building a simple 8x10 camera that would use it, and to do some alt printing directly from the negatives, which makes more sense. I have a Goertz Gold Dot dagor 9.5 inch lens that would work in hyperfocal box camera of some sort. That would be light weight enough to carry at times on my 4-5 mile hikes that I take for my woodland photography. I think I can tape sheets together using black electrical tape on the back side, and make spools to hold the film so it can be advanced through knobs sticking out on the bottom. Not planning on stupid film holders which are too heavy and expensive.
Even simpler would be a 3 shot pinhole camera in the shape of an equilateral triangle, with a sheet on each side, and a pinhole in every corner. This would be very easy to build and extremely light weight. I can use my other camera while waiting for those hour long exposures.
Your new special developer MC-glycol.
