8x10 in Infrared

My first IR image ever! Spring weather has been around for nearly a month here in Northwest Ohio, with more cloudless, sunny days so far than I can recall in the past four years! With skies so clear and temps so moderate, it was only a matter of time before I thawed out "the stash" and tried my luck at infrared (IR) photography.

For those who've never heard of IR before, basically you're capturing electromagnetic radition in the 700nm wavelength range and up (depending on your film/camera's sensitivity). This unique range of light results in a very distinct look to the infrared photos. They're often recognized by deep dark skies, jet black water, dreamy white foliage, and kinda creepy tonal reproduction on people. I'll just be talking about is B&W infrared, as there's really not a lot of color IR film left out there. A vast majority of the IR work you'll see out there is from modified DSLR's, which have a wide range of IR effects. With film infrared, the results are a lot more about the film and filtration, and less about the camera used.

Mmm, mmm those dreamy highlights!A little over 6 months ago, I found a gentleman selling all sizes of Efke 820c infrared film for dirt cheap prices. Doing what any film shooter with G.A.S. would do, I bought a 50 sheet case of 8x10, hoping for the day I would have a good IR filter and some nice weather in Ohio. Thanks to Leslie at Imagine That!, it wasn't long before a nice Tiffen #87 filter came my way, and the experiementation began. Now whenever you start shooting an new film in large format, usually a fair amount of testing is required to get your process nailed down. Effective ASA, development times, dilutions, printing times, and more all change along with the newly added variable. Thankfully, this was the fourth (maybe fifth) film I've taken the time to test, so the process wasn't too wasteful, only two sheets "lost" in the testing process. For some practitioners of the Zone System/Beyond the Zone System/Other Zone Systems, film testing can easily get out of hand, with dozens of sheets being sacrificed all in the name of meticulous control. I don't try that hard for the perfect exposure, but I did manage to bracket the inital test exposures and find a working ASA based off of the test sheets stain density. 

Looks good even with flare! Basing my tests off of the Efke IR 820c Data Sheet availalbe at Freestyle Photographic Supplies, it appeared that a #87 filter with this film would yeild an effective ASA of anywhere from 3-6. So, the first two sheets of film were exposed accordingly, accounting for this film's worse-than-Tri-X-reciprocity. My new standard development time for medium speed film is 12 minutes in Obsidian Aqua 1:500 at 70 deg. F. With the final image stain coming out in both images as much thinner than normal, the ASA 3 sheet "scan-able" but not printable, I knew I needed another stop of light to give these images the "pop" they needed. All of the images seen on today's blog post were taken at ASA 1.5, and though very long exposures, are exactly what I was looking for with this IR film. 

So what does everybody at home think? Keep going with this IR stuff? Personally, I like it enough to shoot it ocassionally, and printing it isn't that bad either. I don't foresee going off the deep end and only doing IR landscapes, but it's a neat novelty that may warrant its own gallery in the near future. Though these first attempts were fun, there's a limited supply I'm working with, and plenty of shots I'd like to reserve for traveling over the summer.

What I'm going for, maybe more clouds...If you'd like to try out your own infrared film, I'd suggest picking some up at Freestyle, as they have a larger selection than most, and are a one-stop-shop for all things analog. If you're hard up on a filter, you may want to snag one of those as well. So as long as you're up to spending a few frames and some time in the name of getting the right exposure/development times, infrared photography can offer you some very unique, visually exciting results. If you've got any more questions about IR techniques, large format IR concerns, or want to go out shooting IR sometime, hit me up via the comment option below, or the contact button at the top of this page.

As always, happy shooting, and long live film!

Hangers & Tanks, Hangers & Tanks! (Film Processing)

                                                       

Ok guys, usually I'm pretty adamant about whatever system I use when processing film. Up until this past week, 8x10 film had always been processing in trays, sloshing a stack of sheets for a pre-determined amount of time. Now that x-ray film has entered the field of play, the entire game has changed! Where tray processing modern film emuslions such as Ilford HP5+ and Kodak Tri-X could afford me processing loads of up to 8 sheets, x-ray film slowed things down to a meager 1-2 sheets at a time. In turn, this lead to uneven development, inconsistent processing, and a whole lot of wasted developer. None of these things are good, to be expected, or something I can live with.

Little did I know, the most simple, elegant solution for my problem had been invented well over 50 years ago! 8x10 film hangers and tanks; those stainless steel, chemistry devouring film hangers and processing tanks were designed with thinner based, orthochromatic films in mind. Simply load the x-ray film under red safelight, place film into pre-soak for 5 minutes, semi-stand process for best compensating effect and acutance, and reap the benefits! At the moment, I'm without a stainless steel drying rack, but since the Pyrocat HD developer further tans and hardens the double-sided emulsion, after final washing, I remove the film to photo-flo and dry it in a cabinet.

So how are the results? There's still a little bit of the backlog to be uploaded to Flickr, but for now, here's a sneak peek at the works in progress.

Stay tuned for more updates on X-Ray film, B&W processing, YouTube videos, and more!

X-Ray Film, Not Just for Shattered Ulnas Anymore!

Above: The aforementioned Ulna 0__0 If you thought X-Ray film was just for this kind of stuff, keep reading, you may be surprised!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the crazy notion that I would start shooting with X-Ray film. Yes, that's right, the same stuff that enabled you to look at your first broken bone can be loaded and shot onto just like any other B&W film. Pretty cool, huh? Well let's take a look at some of the other things that makes X-Ray film it's own unique shooting experience:

1. The Cost - This stuff costs ~ $0.33/sheet in 8x10 after taxes and shipping. Compare that to a premium B&W emulsion such as Kodak TMax 400 at ~ $8/sheet or Ilford HP5+ (my goto film) at ~$4/sheet.
2. The Look - X-Ray film comes in two basic flavors, blue sensitive and green (with some blue) sensitive. Blue sensitive reacts to light similarly to very early B&W films in the look of the final image, while the green sensitive film has a very nostalgic orthochromatic film look (think 1920's B&W).
3. The Feel - Since neither kinds of x-ray film are sensitive to red light, you can load, unload, and even process this film under a red safelight! It almost feels like cheating, coming from spending hours in complete darkness shuffling around film in trays.

The best resource for X-Ray film! (click image

So why isn't every photographer out there shooting this super-cheap "wonder film"? Well, that's because it has it's own set of equally unique flaws that make it more of a specialty film more than an all-purpose film like today's emulsions. For starters it's a little finicky to process, having light sensitive emulsion on not one, but both sides! This means that if you're used to developing sheet film in trays in stacks of 4-10 sheets, forget about it. Processing x-ray film like that would give you more scratches on the film than if you let your cat try and process your regular film by hand.

To add another layer of complexity to this persnickety film, you have keep in mind the color of objects in the picture before photographing it.

My first image shot on X-Ray film

Let's say you're shooting a still life of a green apple and a red apple with green sensitive film. To a standard B&W emulsion, the apples would both appear as middle grey tones, the green apple being just a hair lighter than the red. On green sensitive x-ray film, however, the green apple would be a very light grey tone, with the red apple going a very intense dark grey, almost black. Red, being the compliment of green, will barely be recorded by green sensitive film while green light itself will be recorded even lighter than if using a modern/panchromatic film. The best way I've found to counter this color-visualization problem is to quickly "flick" a green colored filter in front of one eye to see how the light is captured. Why do you have to "flick" the filter? Human eyes are crazy adaptive to changing light situations, and it's very easy to fool our eyes into seeing tones that won't really be as light/dark as we perceive them after adapting to a colored filter.

Shot @ ASA 100 w/ Yellow filtOnce the two issues above have been worked out, there's still the issue of film speed and development to handle! Since there's no real base-line ASA listed for x-ray films, it's anybodies guess as to how to shoot them, let alone process them. The popular opinion of the moment favors two very distinct shooting styles with this film. One camp shoots the film for traditional silver printing and scanning by shooting the film at a low ASA of 50-64, then stripping one of the sides of emulsion, ala Fuji FP-100c negative reclaiming. The other camp shoots the film at a slightly higher ASA 100-200, and keeps both sides of the emulsion intact, to keep that larger negative density for alternative photographic processes such as carbon, platinum/palladium, albumen, and more. My first image (above), was shot at ASA 50, and came out way, WAY too dense to do much of anything with on silver gelatin papers. Considering just how overly dense it was, carbon printing and more contrast-needy alternative processes may be the only way to print those kinds of negatives. Personally, I've found shooting somewhere between ASA 100-200 gives me acceptable prints with silver, and ample density for carbon printing. And with the addition of a yellow filter (see image right), even more contrast can be controlled, and a little darkening of the sky can be obtaining with this naturally contrasty x-ray film. That's all the work done in-camera, now to bring it all together in the darkroom.

The final step in taming x-ray film involves very careful handling and processing. Two sides to the emulsion means 100% more chances for scratches on the film, both when dry loading the film, and when wet processing. It helps being able to do all of this under a red safelight, but still exercise caution with this film. I always wear gloves loading, unloading, and processing, to make sure I don't cover the film with fingerprints that'll show up in the final print. Next comes the issues of scratch-free development. There are three main approaches to doing this: processing one sheet at a time in flat bottomed trays, processing one sheet at a time in ziplock bags, and processing with stainless steel film hangers. At the moment, until I've got the rest of my 8x10 hanger kit assembled, I'm stuck tray processing one sheet at a time. In order to save chemistry, I've been using 1L of Pyrocat HD, 2:2:100 for a run of four sheets. Highly dilute, compensating developers are recommended for x-ray film, as it is very contrasty in nature, but I've seen acceptable results obtained from D-76, to Rodinal, all the way to standard x-ray developer. The other bonus to using a staining and tanning developer such as Pyrocat HD, is that it hardens the emulsion throughout processing, reducing the chances for scratching during stop, fixer, and washing.

That's about all I have to offer on x-ray film at the moment. If you haven't tried some of this very unique, affordable film, trying 100 sheets of it in 8x10 costs less than a tank of gasoline, and gives you a lot of room for experimentation. If you'd like to know more about shooting with x-ray film, or would like to see some more examples, please visit the two links below: (also consider registering with the Large Format Photography Forum)

X-Ray Film Examples and Comparisons

Images Shot on X-Ray Film

Thanks for stopping by, and long live film!