Problem with Wisner 4x5 camera probably solved!

[campbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

     Just thought I'd let you know about something that I found out. I had 
     recently bought my first box of Kodak Infrared 4x5 film. I had been 
     trying to determine a good film speed to use by photographing a sun 
     lit scene with an EI ranging from 800 down to 25 - using a #29 filter. 
     All of the negatives came out extremely dense. The ones with an EI of 
     50 looked about the best but they weve still very dense. I metered 
     with a seperate meter, metering a midtoned area - metered it straight 
     and not through the filter. Anyway, yesterday evening I went and did 
     what I should have done in the first place. I loaded a film holder 
     with a sheet of infrared film, put the holder in the camera and then 
     took the camera outside and exposed the camera to sunlight for about a 
     minute. After developing the film, I found that the negative was 
     totally fogged over - it was so dense that I couldn't see through it. 
     So it looks like the leather bellows on the Wisner is transparent to 
     IR.
     
     A question for you, does anybody know if a plastic dark slide is 
     opaque to infrared? I am using Fidelity Elite film holders.
     
     Ted Campbell
     San Antonio, Texas USA
     campbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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