New HSI

["Stan Patz" <skp113@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the group,

Much to my surprise, Dick Johnson at Kodak sent me some new 4x5 HSI to test. 
The film came in blank boxes, so I only shot eight sheets, just to see what  
the film was like.

There is good news, and there is bad news. The good news is that the film 
appears to be very similar (identical?) to the old HSI, but the pinholes 
were gone!  I exposed it side by side with HSI, metering it at 400 through a 
25 filter: the old film was littered with fine pinholes, but the new stuff 
was as clean as any good film. The images appear to be about the same speed, 
with possibly a little more shadow detail. Green leaves look the same on 
either film.

Now the bad news. Clive's information is correct; the emulsion is on a new 
thinner base. It feels and acts like the same stuff HIE is on. I am talking 
about floppy, curly stuff that is a bitch to load in cut film holders. After 
I "liberated" the film from its foil package, it rose in the box to meet me. 
During loading, the heat from my hand made it curl even more.

In processing, the film is so thin and floppy, one sheet fell out of my 
processing reel when I inverted it. After processing, a number of sheets had 
slipped out of the reel's tracks. I think 6 of the 8 sheets I processed had 
damage, either from loading (I used gloves) or processing. It has to be held 
down on the view box to inspect it with a loupe and it can be damaged trying 
to get it into storage sleeves.

I will try to do more testing this week, and see if I can learn to work with 
this stuff. It took strong medicine to cure the pinhole problem; now I don't 
know if it is palatable.

This may just be a trial balloon. Hopefully, some feedback may convince 
Kodak to put it on a real sheet-film base.

Stan Patz   NYC

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
*
****
*******
******************************************************
*  To remove yourself from this list, send:          *
*         UNSUBSCRIBE INFRARED                       *
*       to                                           *
*         MAJORDOMO@xxxxx                            *
*----------------------------------------------------*
*   For the IR-FAQ, IR-Gallery and heaps of links:   *
*  http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/mainpage.htm  *
******************************************************