Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/11/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]You got it, Dan, and Yes, I heard about the ammonia fumes!!! the trick was to put the film on stainless reels in a four reel tank, but only on the TOP two reels, then put 8 oz of ammonia in the bottom, using the empty reels to keep the film out of the ammonia! Put it in the cupboard for a couple days, and it was supposed to move the toe up a stop or so...an old hand from Greenville, Miss. told me that one (Nell Blakely) - --one of my favorite people, but boy did she have some screwy ideas. We didn't try it, deciding to drink gin instead, but sounded like a good idea!!! Another story: I am now thrilled to say that I got to shoot from the first batch of T-Max 3200. My employer got some samples, no label , plain unprinted yellow box, black cassette!! Kodak simply said try it -- when we asked what it was, they said "DAMN FAST" -- that's all. Still have a bar picture in my office from that batch!! (circa '87??) Lots of fun, those days. Yeah, we use .10 still for threshold on B&W at school, but on color neg and trans we use gray card densities -- can't remember them offhand -- maybe .85 on neg (red status M filter) and maybe 1.0 or so on trans (no/visual filter). Been a while.........mind's the second thing to go....... Thanks for the post, best to U and URS< Walt On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Dan Post wrote: > Walter- > Your story brought back memories- the idea of flashing film . The theory > behind that is that film has a threshold at the toe- no density at all until > that point is reached- I believe it is called the 'Speed Point' because the > amount of light to attain that point on the 'toe of the DlogE curve > determined the film speed. If you gave the film just enough exposure to get > it to reach that 'speed point' then any additional exposure would help bring > up the shadow detail! Tricky business- we used a dark green safelight at > about 4 feet for a few seconds- then re-spooled it! > We used to 'flash our Tri-X when I was in high school so we could > photograph the night football games with the flashes we had available in > 1965! We also tried fuming the film in ammonia fumes to make it more > sensitive, but that didn't work out too well. > It's refreshing to know we weren't totally out in left field then! > Dan > dwpost@msn.com > >