Film emulsion doping breakthrough?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Large format photography : One Thread

I picked this information in the news a few days ago: A scientific team (french, I think) have found an additive (silver by-product) which, when added to the photographic emulsions (at1/10.000), makes them 10X more sensitive without affecting the grain! They said the technology will be applied to X-Rays films at first and then to photographic emulsions by the next three years. Mmh... freezing movements (water falls, wind, people etc.) at 1/500 f22 on fine grain sheet films, sounds nice! Has someone heard of too? (No, it's not a late fools'day hoax!)

-- Paul Schilliger (pschilliger@vtx.ch), April 22, 2000

Answers

In all seriousness I think I have heard about this somewhere as well, but is it not some thing to do with ants saliva or something connected with them?

-- David Kirk (David_J_Kirk@hotmail.com), April 22, 2000.

It is an ant saliva product but is only in preliminary development. I think I recall there were questions about emulsion stability and being able to produce a synthetic version which could be manufactured in quantity.

-- kevin (kkemner@tateandsnyder.com), April 22, 2000.

The company developing the additive is Agfa, I think. An article in the Chicago Tribume reported on this. Imagine 8x10 landscapes at 1/250 at f64. Wind, What wind? If only we all love long enough!

-- Bob Moulton (bobmargaretm@home.com), April 22, 2000.

This was discussed in photo.net/photo last December; see

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl? msg_id=000iIn&topic_id=photo%2enet&topic=

/\/\/\

-- Simon (fourthpres@aol.com), April 22, 2000.


Um, if that URL didn't work for others (it didn't for me), go to www.photo.net/photo > Original Q&A > Older messages > Film > "What is the story on 10x speed film?" (You'll have to scroll down a ways; it was posted on 12/23/99 and they're in reverse chrono order.)

-- Simon (fourthpres@aol.com), April 22, 2000.


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