White film?

kiwivagabond · Nov 8, 2013

May I ask a question. I have been given some old rusty tins of bulk film. The first one was easy to identify, being Agfa 25iso orthographic film. That loaded into canisters now, the second is a dilema. This is out of an old Adox tin. All that is on the label apart from guys name from way back is Safety Film and darkroom only(which could mean non safety light as in orthographic or is that litho???) . Having loaded it into my bulk loader....looking at the tip ready to attach to the spool...........I am hoping the description might help me. The film is white, emulsion side slighty creamy and back side bright white. If you can help me work out what it is that would be awesome...........or some tips on an iso compromise and possible safe work for anything development schedule............love old film.......the risk and the potential to screw up..........hate wasting nice things. Thanks in advance

summicron1 · Nov 8, 2013

assuming it is b/w film, i'd shoot a test roll rating it at asa 100 (or iso 100, whichever), develop in d-76 or some other common all purpose developer for, oh, 9 minutes, and see what you get.

If it's thin, you underexposed, if it's thick you over exposed and if you are really lucky you'll develop edge numbers or other information that will, however badly exposed/developed, tell you what the film is.

Bill Burk · Nov 8, 2013

That might be Headliner paper! In darkroom (red light ok) hit part of it with a light, like a flashlight. Slip it into Dektol and then rinse and fix. If it remains paper-like with a high contrast black image where you hit it with light... Might be graphic arts paper designed for a primitive filmstrip-type typesetting device.

tony lockerbie · Nov 8, 2013

Can't remember a film with a white base, although I seem to recall some ortho films being like that. Also used a low contrast duplicating film that was used to make B&W slides from a negative. The suck-it-and-see approach may be the only answer though.

railwayman3 · Nov 8, 2013

Possibly movie positive (print) film....I remember having some like this many years ago. Was OK for contact printing film strips, using an orange paper safelight. Does it have cine-film-type perforations (with rounded edges)?

Gerald C Koch · Nov 8, 2013

Could be MP leader which is not sensitive to light. Put a small piece in some developer and see if it darkens.

Nicholas Lindan · Nov 8, 2013

Sounds like Adox blue-sensitive 'display' film. It is a paper emulsion, develop in Dektol. Good for making transparencies from negatives if you have an ELDIA and like to be driven mad by dust.

Tom1956 · Nov 8, 2013

Sounds like possibly Pos 1 film or paper. That was a self-contained graphic arts camera, darkroom, and processor all in one. The whole thing was on wheels and about the same size as the floor wash machine they use today in the grocery stores. The Pos 1 was for making or shooting paste-up copy in the offset composition dept or small-time ad agencies back in the 70's and 80's.
Or perhaps its what they used in the Compugraphic typesetter back then. I remember all that stuff. Film, paper, and photochemicals were really important then. Nothing ever got to an offset press without all kinds of fancy specialty photo supplies.
Could be PMT film or paper. Agfa was a big name in those kinds of supplies in the US. Probably the most common name you ever saw in those composition departments was Agfa.

AgX · Nov 8, 2013

Nicholas Lindan said:
Sounds like Adox blue-sensitive 'display' film. It is a paper emulsion, develop in Dektol. Good for making transparencies from negatives if you have an ELDIA and like to be driven mad by dust.

But in contrast to double-perforated 35mm photographic paper, I never heard of white, opaque display film being released in such a 35mm conversion.
Has Adox made such?

Prof_Pixel · Nov 8, 2013

Seems to me the old 35mm Kodak Fine Grain Positive film was pretty white. I used to use it to make B&W slides from B&W negatives.

StoneNYC · Nov 8, 2013

The GAF aerial film I use (70mm) is the same exact color as your description, I thought it was bad, but turns out to be great stuff.

Shoot a roll bracketed EI 200, 100, 50, 25, 12, 6 and develop 1:100 in Rodinal.

That will give you a good staring point.

kiwivagabond · Nov 9, 2013

thanks everyone, those are awesome replies...will test tomorrow and let your know......much appreciated. Graham

StoneNYC · Nov 9, 2013

kiwivagabond said:
thanks everyone, those are awesome replies...will test tomorrow and let your know......much appreciated. Graham

5 minutes in HC-110 is another dev starting point option, as it could be old and fogged, but the 1:100 would also help as it will give decent exposure when you're not sure what the time would be, up to you.

kiwivagabond · Nov 10, 2013

White film developments.

Just a quick update on my white film. Have been so busy at the gallery I haven't had time to cut some film in the darkroom for a 35 mm exposure and develop as per the great ideas on this thread.............but, while someone else was developing yesterday I did pull a slice out of the bulk loader in daylight and see if it developed...........yep it went black. Then I thought I would pull a piece out in the darkroom and expose it to redlight in an attempt to see if it was orthographic..........it didnt go black but a light, very light greyish..........havent figured out if that proves the ortho thing or not.
Then cut a slice and put it in fixer.............and it cleared and I have no idea what that proves........LOL. yes I do.

One byproduct of the brief time I had to go further down some road of finding out what it was is this.............pondering this as I went to sleep I was trying to wrap my brain around how they put all that info on the edge of the film that is evident after development.............hmmm still cant wrap my head around that..........but its only Monday.

Tonight after work is the real test......and again thanks to everyone for the good advice.

http://www.ipernity.com/home/kiwivagabond

Cheers

AgX · Nov 10, 2013

kiwivagabond said:
Then cut a slice and put it in fixer.............and it cleared and I have no idea what that proves........LOL. yes I do.

At least this proves that is not a paper base nor opaque film base for light-box transparencies.

KennyMark · Nov 10, 2013

Memory tells me that Kodak IE was white. I don't know why I think this as Kodak recommended to load and unload in complete darkness.
Or, as Bob Newhart said to Suzanne Pleshette, "I just had the strangest dream."

cmacd123 · Nov 10, 2013

The edge printing is done by one of the machines at the factory. The Folks at ADOX.DE (the current one) put out some pictures and a video out showing their rebuilt perforating machine.

http://www.adox.de/35mm_Perforiermaschine_neu_aufgebaut_1.jpg

(Video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo4piI1JaWA but does not really show the edge printing process)

The large wheels on the right hand side of the Photo contain the Numbers for the edge printing of the frame numbers. The larger one is for 36 exposures and the smaller for 24. (or given the age of the original machine perhaps 20)

The film is wrapped around the drum , and the numbers are exposed by a light on the inside, through a mask built in the wheel with the desired image.

Most modern machines just use a LED or A laser to print the information in a dot-matrix form. You can see the dots on Fuji under high magnification.

cmacd123 · Nov 10, 2013

Blue sensitive film is generaly white, I understand (perhaps Ron the Photo engineer can confirm this )but the colour that we are used to is due to the sensitizing and anti-halation dyes.

Eastman Fine Grain Release Positive 5302/7302 which is the stock used for Black and white movie Prints is a slightly off white cream colour.In fact it is often used Right out of the can as "Light Struck Leader" In that application the leader eventually gets a row of dark images of the projector gate as it sees a LOT of light then it goes through the projector.

Nicholas Lindan · Nov 16, 2013

AgX said:
I never heard of white, opaque display film being released in such a 35mm conversion.

The Adox film is translucent white; the OP didn't say opaque, though he may have meant it.

StoneNYC · Nov 16, 2013

I keep forgetting to share these...

Examples of the "white" GAF film I have,
It's an eggshell white kind of white, it's white on both sides, seemingly the same color of white, and is semi-translucent as shown in the third picture.

Hope this is of some use to you.

StoneNYC · Nov 17, 2013

Cruzingoose said:
I've got some film like that. It is LPD-4. Normally used for making title slides and developing in D8, it works very well as ConTone developed in HC110. Use and EI of 8 to start.

This stuff I posted above is aerial film, it has an AERIAL ASA of 200, which is different then ground speed, but when I got it I had no info on it other then the speed listed and the compensation for shooting a ground which was listed inside of the can on the information sheet, but nowhere online can I find anyone who listed being able to shoot it what SAG shut it, and what developing times should be used, so I sort of guesstimated and arrived at The fact that it could be in fact shot at 200, and also then developed in HC-110 at five minutes, so MY film is definitely not the same stuff.

But I'm not sure what the OP has, and he/she hasn't posted pics yet... lol

Ross Chambers · Nov 17, 2013

We used White film (called "opaque" for some reason) in motion picture cutting rooms for leaders etc. It allowed for easy marking as every roll needed to be identified head and tail and inserts for shots not yet available needed to be included sometimes . Maybe this is what you have. I'm not aware of its develop-ability, not something we ever tried.

White film?

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