loading color slides

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Halfway through loading some fugi velvia in the bathroom I noticed a very slight light leak coming from the light fixture. It wasn't facing my film, and from where I was standing, no shadows were visible.

Can this film still be salvaged from the small indirect light leak?

-- ty fisher (lowflyingfish@hotmail.com), October 18, 2000

Answers

Probably. Develop a sheet and find out. With slow film like Velvia, one can get away with a surprising amount of light leakage.

-- David Goldfarb (dgoldfarb@barnard.edu), October 18, 2000.

As long as it isn't too much and is unfocused on the film, and of course from a source far away from your loading table, it is astounding to me how much light can be leaking in and still not have any effect. Camera Obscura would take multiple hours to expose Velvia through a pinhole aperature with bright sunlight outside of the room. I load lots of film in hotel bathrooms. After an hour or so in the dark you can start to see light from lots of unforeseen places and can even start to make out objects in the room by that light. Flourescents also start to show faint glow after quite some time. I also use an inflatable darkroom in places where I can't close off the bathroom, and I have been stunned to see pin holes in the walls towards the end of a marathon session that didn't seem to be there when I started. I keep tape with me and hit them with a piece when I see them but it would seem that this would be too late. But I have never had ANY fog on TMX 100 or HP5+, so I doubt you will have it on a 50 (or less) speed film. The best test is to run a sheet and see but unless the leak was sizable you shouldn't see a thing.

-- Rob Tucher (rtphotodoc@juno.com), October 18, 2000.

last fall I opened a box with 30-some sheets of exposed velvia right in front of a brightly lit window. As soon as I overcame my horror at what I had done (about .4 milliseconds) I slammed the box shut and screamed WHY WHY WHY AM I SO STUPID at the top of my lungs. The top few sheets were ruined and a number had fogging at the edges, but a good number alo turned out printable. You should be OK, but just for safety's sake yell WHY WHY WHY......

-- Wayne (wsteffen@mr.net), October 18, 2000.

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