What are these spots??

[ColdEye]

Oh I see! Thanks for the clarification. guess there's I'll just have to deal with it.

 

[Photo Engineer]

None of my SS tanks leak and only a few of my plastic tanks lieak! I generally have no problem.

However, as said above, there are gloves and I keep a box of them in the DR.

PE

 

[Worker 11811]

You can get a 100-pack of disposable Nitrile gloves at stores like Harbor Freight or Central Tractor for about $10.00.

 

[flashflint]

Uneven drying?

 

[alexfoto]

Its an air bubble, i have the same problem with tri-x and HC110 and i solve them with presoaks the film in tap water for about one minute with continuous agitation.

 

[michaelbsc]

Sorry if we may have confused you - as far as I know no-one makes a SS tank and plastic reel combination.

Somewhere in the pile of auction junk I have a plastic reel that does fit a stainless tank. I have no clue who made it. No markings at all. It is kind of fragile so I never did anything with it. Might have been fine when it was new, but clearly the idea never caught on.

I never saw another one like it.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Oh I see! Thanks for the clarification. guess there's I'll just have to deal with it.

It's not a big deal. Just wear gloves as suggested. Easy peasy.

 

[cmacd123]

The only plastic reel for a stainless tank that I have seen was the one that ILFORD made for the short lived HP5 Motordrive film. It is unmarked black plastic and has a very narrow channel that will hold ten feet of thin base film (72 exposures). They alos had a stainless tank about 1 and a half times the normal size with a long Stainless reel. I think that is the one I used when I had the film.

Our friend Simon G. has stated that they intend to never try to make a polyester base film again. I would guess it caused some equipment problems.

 

[cmacd123]

My favourite tanks are the JOBO 1500 series. they leak LESS than the Patterson. The "new Style" AP (arista and other brands) tanks have a red plastic top with a seal similar in principle to the Jobo lids. but I have only seen them for sale in the one and two reel format. AP shows them as 5 reel versions on their web site but I have not seen that version for sale. The newer AP reels are my favourite for 120 film, as they prevent curing when puting the film in the reel, but I hate them for 35mm as you can't peek at the film while it is in the wash. the reel must be opened to get the film off.

The jobo 1500 tank and reels are not interchangeable with teh paterson, but the AP and Patterson do let reels and tanks interchange, (but not other parts)

 

[jbl]

+1 on the Hewes reels. They're really fantastic and well worth the cost.

-jbl

 

[Simon R Galley]

Dear CmacD123

You are correct, but we do still coat on polyester film, but only for specialist applications like surveillance film, but we will only coat camera films on tri-acetate base. To give you an idea we coat specialist display films ( inkjet ) onto 300 micron thick polyester base, not too long ago we had a jam in the take up magazine in the coating machine and the polyester base bent a set of 6" thick stainless steel rollers 70" wide virtually in two and still did not break...tough stuff polyester.....

Polyester and camera mechanisms ( especially motor driven ) are not a good mix in our humble opinion.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

 

[laser]

Kodak coats on Mylar/Estar support

Film can be successfully coated on Mylar/Estar*. It is matter of coating machine design.

Kodak coats all camera sheet film on Mylar/Estar as well as many other films used for aerial, graphic arts and x-ray. These applications require dimensional stability. Mylar/Estar has a huge dimensional stability advantage over acetate. With age, humidity and temperature acetate will change about 3x more than Mylar/Estar. These changes may not be reversible. This can be troublesome with sheets 4x5 and larger.

Kodak continued to make Ektachrome sheet film on acetate to facilitate manual retouching. With acetate films the emulsions could be cut out and stripped off the acetate and then attached to another substrate. When this technique was replaced by PhotoShop etc. Kodak changed to Mylar/Estar.


*In the 1950's Kodak, in cooperation with DuPont, began perfecting the process for making the Kodak version of Mylar called Estar. Estar is made specifically for photographic purposes. The materials and process for Estar and Mylar are similar.


See: www.makingKODAKfilm.com

 

[cmacd123]

polyester base bent a set of 6" thick stainless steel rollers 70" wide virtually in two and still did not break...tough stuff polyester.....

Polyester and camera mechanisms ( especially motor driven ) are not a good mix in our humble opinion.

The data point I recall was when I was working in Microfilm. Were were using a thin base IMAGECAPTURE AHU 16mm film, (215 feet on a 100ft spool thin) and generaly had a few feet left over as the rolls were pre planed to have related information on the same roll. The camera was based on a Kodak MRD-2 Head, and that was not a problem but one day the technicaians chalenged everyone to try and break the film.

One Fellow, who had a karate background actually could get it to break, but only by using a very high speed snapping motion. Everyone else (about 20 people) just got sore hands.

Motion Picture release film is now always on the polyester and theatre projectors had to have shear pins and "buckle trip" switches to deal with the odd jam.

I do recall I only had a few rolls of the "Ilford Motor drive film", (the only place I ever saw it was when Freestyle had it on Clear out!) I loaded one in my Ricoh Auto half, and went shooting all day. About 150 pictures on one roll of slightly currly film.

I may still have a roll in my freezer, but it is probably not useful after all these years

 

[Worker 11811]

I was a field service tech for Cinemark. I was responsible for ten theaters with an average of 10 projectors each.
Not one of them had any kind of shear pin or tension sensing switch. Some of the newer systems relied on optical failsafes that reflect infrared light off the film to detect the flicker of the sprocket holes going by. Most of them only had drop-arm failsafes that only detected presence or lack thereof.

Most of the projectors had a steel drive shaft that drove the sprockets via hard fiber (Formica?) gears. If there was a film jam and you were lucky, the fiber gears would strip out. Some of the older projectors had all steel gears. If you have a film jam in one of those, you'll likely stop the machine cold. If the intermittent strips out, you could be in for a $2,000+ repair bill. There is also a helical spline gear and shaft that drives the shutter which costs over $1,000.

The majority of the time, the sprockets will tear through the sprocket holes and the film will just ball up behind the sprockets but, if you have a really bad one, your projector could be down for a couple of days while the parts are FedEx'ed in. You'll have to listen to your technician cussing you out the whole time.

The answer is DON'T SCREW UP! To be honest, it's pretty easy to thread a projector correctly if you pay attention.
Your average 10-plex movie theater runs the equivalent of 500 miles of film every week. It's not hard if you do your job right.

Just as a test, me and a couple of my buddies took some old movie trailers out back of the theater, one night, and used it to tow a car.
We just doubled the film over the trailer hitch of one guy's pickup then around the back bumper of the car and tied a knot. The film streched and buckled a lot but we were able to tow a car with it.

If you took several strands of polyester film and twisted it together, I have no doubt that you could pull a sizeable load with it.

 

[DannyP]

I'm getting some spots occasionally, but they're not exactly like the OPs.

Can someone identify these?

This is Xtol that has been mixed for over a month, stored in a cool dark place, mixed only with distilled water. I do rap the tank, but I stopped pre-soaking after all my research led to the general conclusion that it wasn't necessary.

I do not shake or stir the Xtol before mixing it 1:1 with distilled water. Should I be doing that?

When these marks do happen, they seem to be on the last two or three frames only, but that could be coincidental.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Looks like air bubbles or foam. Can you see any foam on the top of the solution? What kind of film is it?

PE

 

[DannyP]

This was Arista EDU 200. But it has also happened with an expired roll of Shanghai 100.

I never noticed any foam.

I do also develop color film with a Unicolor kit, but in the case of the Shanghai film, I developed several rolls of black and white between the CN and the Shanghai with no issue, so I don't think it's a matter of left over/dried on stabilizer.

 

[Photo Engineer]

If they run lengthwise to the film, I would then suspect a coating defect, but otherwise I would still suspect some sort of bubble effect.

PE