IR light in the developer fogs IR film

As first tries usually go, my first try at infrared color film didn’t work. When I brought my first roll of IR film in to my developer (Henry in the South Bay, Foto Express, look him up if you’re down there he’s great and really helpful) he explained to me that his machine had an infrared light inside which would probably fog the film. I’d read about that, but not seen any pictures of what it looked like and not wanting to send it off I asked him to run it anyway and as it turns out the roll was way overexposed to begin with. So much so that only a few pictures even came out but those that did show the fogging Henry had warned me about.

As I understand it modern machines use an infrared light to find content on the film strip. Films, unless specifically made sensitive to infrared light, don’t register this light so it’s not a problem but infrared films do register the light as it moves past and burn onto the film. Good news Henry knows a guy with an older machine that doesn’t use any infrared light and I’ve gotten some great results from that. His machine does use a huge quantity of water though so he only runs batches. It can be a few weeks wait to get IR shots back, but the anticipation just makes the shots that work even better.

Anyway in case you’re wondering that’s what the “infrared fogging” looks like.
Cheers!

écrit par kangiha le2013-02-07