HIE Substitute!?!

Well, almost!

Most of the IR film of today needs a ‘black’ filter to give the wood effect e.g. 715nm-filter or R72. This make it difficult for us SLR-users to make IR-action and street photography as we did with HIE and #25-filter.

Fortunately Rollei is coming with a new film this year, as we have read on this site, in this thread (there was a url link here which no longer exists). This film looked promising for IR-photography, so I picked up some Superpan 200 (SP200) from Moersch this spring, with his excellent Finol developer. Test shots with #25 and 715nm-filters gave me hope that something in between would work so I order a 665nm-filter.

And it worked!

See the pictures with No filters and 665-filter.

SP200 and the 665-filter give a nice wood effect, and a viewfinder that it is possible to look through and frame the shot. Even better, SP200+665 is so sensitive to IR that it is possible to handheld the camera with a wide-angle and normal lens!

Finol and SP200 gives nice smooth grain which are great for normal pictures, but I feel it lacks some grittiness in IR-pictures, another hallmark for HIE. So I made a variant of Beutler – Beutler GD, GD for Grain Developer.

Beutler GD gives me plenty of sharp grains which are apparent on 18x23cm enlargements and approximately 1 extra stop of speed, comparing with Finol.

See the picture Beutler GD, unfortunately the scan doesn’t give credit to the picture.

I have found my substitute for HIE, maybe it will be yours too? So give this combination a chance and test it

You will find my recipe for Beutler GD under Chem Recipes.

I don't see halation nor substantial Wood effect. Yes it has grit though

Halation will be very difficult to find nowadays, with HIE gone.

Tom

Tom A said:

Halation will be very difficult to find nowadays, with HIE gone.

Tom

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Just thinking out loud, but...

Might it be possible to unspool, gently presoak in water (or even a mild alkali with a final rinse), then let dry and respool the film? The idea being to remove the antihalation layer before the exposures are made.

Perhaps not an easy or efficient path to the desired result. But depending on how badly that result is desired, could it work...?

Ken

How about Lucky film? ;-)

-Sino.

"This make it difficult for us SLR-users to make IR-action and street photography as we did with HIE and #25-filter."

It sure does!!! It ain't gonna happen like that ever again unless another film is introduced. HIE with a 25 filter could be rated around EI 25 in the sun, and still look like pretty heavy IR. That is hand holdable in many situations. The other films available now can get hand-holdable speeds, but not with strong IR effects. Your best bet would be a converted digital point and shoot or SLR, and shoot it at max ISO. Not the same as HIE, unfortunately, but it would let you shoot hand held, and give you some grit. Try an older camera if you really want some film-like noise. One from before they started massaging high-ISOs over too much. Canon 1D, 1Ds, 10D, D60, D30, etc. or Nikon equivalences.

Tom A said:

Halation will be very difficult to find nowadays, with HIE gone.

Tom

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Is Maco Aura still made? IIRC, this film had no anti-halation backing.

Tom A said:

Halation will be very difficult to find nowadays, with HIE gone.

Tom

Click to expand...

Or even perhaps place a bright white backing (maybe one of those pressure-sensitive easy-to-remove white mailing stickers) over your camera's pressure plate to possibly "overwhelm" the antihalation backing, instead of removing it beforehand? Highly reflective metallic tape might work even better.

If using sheet film, I would think a thin white piece of paper behind the film might help produce some kind of effect.

Ken

jim appleyard said:

Is Maco Aura still made? IIRC, this film had no anti-halation backing.

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Its been gone a while now, was my favourite IR film

Very interesting Tom, thanks for posting.

I've heard the suggestion of presoaking IR film in sheet sizes to get the halation effect, could be worth a shot.

No it is not made anymore, basically I guess because there was no halo effects to speak of. I tried a lot of things with the sheet film version such as placing white paper, aluminum foil, copy sheet etc behind the film to enhance halo effects. Did not work. I even obtained glass plate holder, and placed a piece of glass behind the film: still no halo effect.

Only gross overexposure resulted in some halo formation, but at the cost of very dense highlights obviously..

Best,

Cor

jim appleyard said:

Is Maco Aura still made? IIRC, this film had no anti-halation backing.

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I am well aware that a large part of HIE special characteristic came from halation, but I have never thought of doing all sorts of tricks to get the halation effect back, just accepted the lose.
Maybe a soft filter will give some sort of pseudo-halation, I don't know, maybe I will try this some day.

Tom

Is Maco Aura still made? IIRC, this film had no anti-halation backing.

thefizz said:

Its been gone a while now, was my favourite IR film

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I bought the last three rolls of this in Windsor ON. I metered the first roll at ISO 6, which I have since learned is way underexposed. The negatives were printable, but barely. Luckily, this film (like cube 400) seems to keep a lot of detail in even the thinnest of negatives. From what I saw, the IR effect is pretty substantial. I still have two rolls to go and I'm hoping I will have better success with them. I've heard ISO 1 as a good starting point for this film. Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Judging by the prices on Fleabay at present, I'm puzzled why there isn't a good market for someone to do an exact copy of HIE, or close enough without anti halation.

If people are prepared to pay, and I quote:US $158.50 (approximately £79.11) for a roll of the stuff Here if you don't believe me!

Surely a short custom run would be money in the freezer

It must be the last roll on earth! I better get my bid in.

Interestingly, the price of rolls EIR on ebay has now dropped from the stratospheric levels they were fetching a few months ago. Wonder if the same will happen to HIE.

Still slightly tempted to part with some of both, but can't quite bring myself to do it!

Why do people spend that much on film? What's the point? Unless you must have the same film to finish a project, I'd rather have 10 new rolls of something similar. Sell them and cash in.

keithwms said:

I don't see halation nor substantial Wood effect. Yes it has grit though

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There was this comment about the "missing" wood effect. Here are some other neg. scans showing more of it, especially in the grass.
Is it called "Grass effect" then?

I have attempted to ajusted light and contrast in photoshop and after 10 minutes my patient with photoshop came to an end - so, here they are.

The first picture (...Moen001.jpg) was taken on a very dull and overcasted day.

Tom

Sorry to sound pedantic, and if you know this already then just ignore me, but the Wood effect is named after Robert Williams Wood, who realized that there were particular IR reflections you could see by blocking visible wavelengths. In the case of grass and many leaves, the issue is that the chlorophyll absorption (as well as that of some other botanical pigments) goes down very steeply at the high end of the red spectrum. So Wood effect is really quite particular of photorgaphy done at >700-750 nm or so.

I guess what I am saying is, please capitalize Wood because it refers to a scientist and not the substance :rolleyes: (some sarcasm here, don't worry!)

Anyway, what I am seeing in the photos is, to me, classical red-filtered pan film response, but I don't see Wood effect per se. I mean, I have seen similar results from (there was a url link here which no longer exists). No prominent Wood effect but some hints of IR-like tonality. You will see plenty of Wood effect in appropriately filtered Rollei IR, Efke IR, or SFX. And in principle any of these films could be made to halate like HIE, either by washing off the AH dye and/or placing an IR-reflective substance (Al foil!) behind the film. I haven't tried either but will when I get time.

Just looked at your last attachment, that one does look fairly "Woody" to me

I see that superpan 200 is supposed to be sensitive to 740 so that may indeed give a bit of Wood. But HIE sees out to, what, 900?

keithwms said:

Just looked at your last attachment, that one does look fairly "Woody" to me

I see that superpan 200 is supposed to be sensitive to 740 so that may indeed give a bit of Wood. But HIE sees out to, what, 900?

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Superpan 200 is actually sensitive to 750nm and it peaks in sensitivity just beyond 700nm, you can find the data sheet for it here.

I have tested Rollei IR400 and efke IR and both are nice film and they both lack speed with an IR-filter on. I wouldn't dare to hand hold a camera loaded with one of these film and an IR-filter on, it will be a sure way to get unsharp pictures. With Superpan 200 and 665-filter I can hand hold with an reasonable shutter speed of 1/125 to 1/250 at f:8. Almost as good as HIE.

I cann't see what you are trying to compare with your link to an otherwise nice picture exposed on Rollei R3.