Re: (Fwd) EOS and IR film

[tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tom Benedict)]

It was sent by me and re-reached my mailbox, so hopefully it reached
everyone.

The results are a little disappointing, but not as bad as I might've
expected.  I haven't contact printed the negs yet, but I did develop
them last night.  The upshot is that the sprocket hole area is completely
blocked out.  It matches the highest density area in any of the images.
The good part is that it only covers the sprocket holes.

The bad part is that there is considerable fogging into the image area.
I'd say the lower 1/4 of the image is affected to some extent.  Two
ways to handle it, both of which I'm going to try:

        First, when composing, assume the lower 1/4 of the image will be
        blown away, and crop accordingly.  When printing, just don't
        print that area of the negative.

        Second, go ahead and compose and expose normally, then do some
        considerable dodging and burning to get rid of the fogged area.

This last one may be a little easier to do than it sounds.  The leader
area of the film also has the fogging, but no image.  It may be possible
to use that to make an enlargement mask that will almost perfectly get
rid of the fogging.  However (big however) this will leave two problems:
The fogged area has less information to play with, so contrast may be a
little strange in the "repaired" area.  Also, since HIE tends to get
halos on heavily exposed areas, the halo effect will be more prominent
in the fogged area, regardless of how well you dodge and burn during
enlargement.

Like I said, I haven't printed any of them yet, so these ideas are untried
as yet.  I'm planning on making a contact print of the negatives, as well
as a contact print of the leader, so the fogging can be seen, as well as
what it does to the image.  Next, I'll try each of the ideas above and
scan them in as well.  The end result should be a "what you get" (the
negative contact print), and "what can be done" (prints of all of the
"fixes").  More fun for Cor and the Gallery!

Tom

P.S.  The end result of all this is that I'm either going to get a
body without the IR sprocket counter, or change all of my IR photography
over to 4x5.  This is a pain in the rear!

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Topic No. 15