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Ultra-thin film stocks

MCB18

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I just finished rolling up some bulk lengths of Type 42L (aka Santa Rae 1000) film from Astrum, and this film is INCREDIBLY thin. Feels almost like tissue paper! My guess would be that it’s maybe 0.06-0.07mm thick. About 2/3 the thickness of the “thin” Aviphot places like Rollei or MacoDirect sell. And I’m wondering, what other ultra-thin film stocks are there? Were they available to the consumer, or were they always for specialized purposes such as areal recon or traffic surveillance?
 

xkaes

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Typically, the lower the ISO, the thinner the film, but some films are made extra thin for various reasons. One is to get more film in the camera/film cassette. Similarly, to make long rolls of film smaller in diameter & weight. Microfilm is very low ISO and very thin to be used in long rolls used in microfilm readers. Many submini camera users use microfilm to get more than the typical 12-20 exposures from their camera. For example, you can load a tiny Minox camera for 100 exposures using micro film -- it has to be "pulled" to lower the contrast, but the results are amazing.
 

MattKing

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For a while Ilford made 135 film in 72 exposure rolls on very thin stock. IIRC, there were problems!
 
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MCB18

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Well I loaded the extra bit of 42L I had after rolling the bulk rolls into 3 and a bit 36 exposure rolls, and I had to trim the leader… took them out of the black can for maybe 30 seconds to do it in room light. Hopefully that didn’t cause a shitton of light piping.

And I was able to get a measurement of the thickness with some calipers, 0.07mm!
 

Europan

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Du Pont began manufacturing motion-picture stocks on a 0.0025" (0,0635 mm) PETP or Mylar base in 1950 but discontinued those in 1953 in favour of 0.004" (0,1 mm) base thickness films. These were regularly available from 1955 on. The Mylar story was later continued by Du Pont-Teijin.

Thin-base materials are common as microfilms and microfilm duplicating stocks. Other applications are aerial camera uses, the thinnest were made for NASA during the Apollo program. Consumer photography never really knew a drastic change in film thickness. Cinematography neither.
 

Marcelo Paniagua

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Had used aerial film on PE0 Polyester base with a thickness of 0.0025”/0.06 mm. A pain to work with, either when scanning or when putting on enlarger film holder. Also, I need to be careful when spooling since it can easily be kinked/bend.
 

Sanug

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MattKing said:
For a while Ilford made 135 film in 72 exposure rolls on very thin stock.
Click to expand...
It was the "HP5 autowinder". It was available for a short period of time only. Very thin and blueish. A special tank spiral was available, too. I used one expired discount roll.
 

ic-racer

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I used a lot of these back when they were avaliable.

 
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MCB18

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ic-racer said:
I used a lot of these back when they were avaliable.

View attachment 372122
Click to expand...

When I told folks how thin 42L was, this was their immediate first suggestion, lol. Unfortunately I have no way to develop the entire 72 exposure roll, so that would be kinda pointless…
 

xkaes

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On the other hand, anyone can develop a 100 exposure roll of Minox film -- shorter than a 36 exposure roll of 35mm film.
 

Kodachromeguy

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MattKing said:
For a while Ilford made 135 film in 72 exposure rolls on very thin stock. IIRC, there were problems!
Click to expand...

I remember these films from around 1982 or 1983. I also remember that Leica offered a special back for the R4 to use these 72 exp. rolls. We had a long thread on this topic about 3 years ago. AgX may have found an advertisement about this back.

(Where did AgX go? He regularly wrote comments. )
 
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MCB18

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Cursed idea that you could pull off with this super thin film: 420 film (220 but twice the length). That would be fucking hilarious lol
 

Corn_Zhou

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Some aerial films like Kodak 3409 comes on 2.5mil/62.5micron base which is 0.06mm thick and features high-resolution and high-contrast.
Lucky in China also made a similar aero-recon film called Type 1025.
They are both super-duper thin which makes them quite annoying to process on a plastic spiral.
 
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MCB18

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Yes, I can definitely see that. 42L is also 0.06mm thick, and I wil absolutely be processing on steel reels.
 
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