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weird pattern on film.

jordanstarr

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I just developed another roll of this stuff and it's starting to drive me crazy. It's basically a "Z" pattern and along the Z it's overexposed by a stop so it wreaks the whole roll. The pattern is perfect, which indicates it's not a chemical error and because it's only on a few rolls it can't be my Hasselblad back. What I'm wondering is if it could be from the xray at the airport, but I was using a lead bag and most of the film is fine. So far it's showed up on 4 sheets of film and 2 rolls of 120 film.

Anyone have any clue what this could be? I don't have any photos of it yet.
 

JBrunner

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Sounds like xray damage, based on the description. Do you have a scan you could post?
 

glbeas

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Just remember if the scanner operator can't see what's in the lead bag he may just crank up the power until he can see something. No telling what THAT will do to the film.
 

kodachrome64

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If it went through checked baggage I think it can be ruined in one pass. In this day and age with security, it's best just to attempt to get them to hand check it. Worse case it will go through the carry-on scanner and that shouldn't be a big deal, at least once or twice. In the US I have had no problem getting hand checks. I take the film cans out of any packaging so they can see it and it looks like they run a swab on the inside of the baggie to check for chemical residue. They didn't seem to mind the ones I rolled myself.

Nick
 
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jordanstarr

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I usually don't have problems with them checking my film either, but I had a ton of film and thought a lead bag would be enough. It didn't effect my 125 plus-x film, but about 1/4 of my tri-x was zapped I guess. I just don't understand why ALL of it wasn't zapped.
 

JBrunner

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Several reasons, the machine has a gain, and can be "turned up" either manually or as an automatic response to density, also the zorched rolls may have been the ones that shielded the others, the way the rolls were oriented could also have been a factor. Xrays are funky things....
 

Bob F.

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Was the film in checked bags or carry-on? What film was it?

There should be no problem with carry-on scanners at 400ASA or under (and probably none with even faster film) but checked luggage gets zapped with much higher levels of X-ray so is far more likely to have problems - some would say certain to... I have yet to read a convincing argument that carry-on scanners damage film under 400ASA so I'd be interested to find out if this was a carry-on scanner and if so, where was it?
 

mrtoml

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I had a problem which sounds like yours. The thread is here:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I had a bag full of film, but only one roll (so far) got zapped. Apparently the X-Ray machines can be focussed on a small area and then turned up to see what they find. This can therefore affect small areas within your luggage rather than zapping the whole bag.
 
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jordanstarr

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...it definately looks like an xray. From now on I'm not even gonna bother with film through the airport, I'm just going to mail it back and forth or take it as a carry-on.

thanks for all your help guys.
 
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