x-ray film for enlarged negatives?

[nick mulder]

Common, inexpensive X-ray film is coated on both sides with emulsion. Theoretically this would limit resolution, as the image from a camera would only be focused on the one side, but in practice, the X-ray images are plenty sharp. If you normally shoot your images with your lens stopped down a couple of stops, the depth-of-field of the lens would compensate and would render both sides "in-focus".

I was thinking however that in the contact print, especially with diffuse banks of UV lights that the top emulsion side being one film thickness away from the paper would cast a diffuse shadow - better than a sharp but off axis one though huh...

Would be nice if you could develop one side in Neg and the other as a weak positive ... kind of a bastard unsharp mask, using the effect of the distance as the 'blur' that you'd usually have in the mask.

Maybe I have my negs and positives the wrong way round, but you get the picture ?