Stockpile Stewardship

Don't you love the words that the Military comes up with to avoid saying something too directly. So, making sure that the nation's nukes will serve as an effective "deterrent", they have a "Stockpile Stewardship" program to make sure that a 20 year old bomb will actually go off, without requiring a "Exercise" to test them.

Um, but anyway... I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about my stockpile of discontinued films.

I've got 6 rolls of Ektachrome IR in the freezer. When I'm done with them, the door will close on the funky-false-color-IR-styled work for a long long time, potentially forever.

I've got 19 rolls of Kodak High Speed IR film. I'm going to see how much High Speed IR I can stockpile before it's gone.

I've got 3 rolls of Ektachrome 160T. I love it crossprocessed. It's very funky.

I've got a roll of Fujichrome 64T, which has been replaced by an improved film. I haven't gotten around to shooting it yet because I don't do enough work that calls for tungsten color balance.

I've got one roll of EPN and one roll of EPR and I will probably get a little more of those, more because I'm trying to shoot everything that's not available anymore than because I'm huge fans of them.

The way I see things, the big tragedy is not High Speed IR or 160T or EPN or EPR. There are other IR films available. Pretty much all of the remaining companies know how to make an IR film because all of them have made one in recent history. The halation effects can be simulated in Photoshop and your average dSLR with the IR blocking filter removed has more than enough sensitivity to be worth playing with. Plus, I can shoot Efke IR820c and Ilford SFX on my RB67. The real tragedy is Ektachrome IR, which has results that cannot be obtained in any other way.

Comments

Posted by Gian Guido Zurli 17 years ago:

For the haliation effect: try, before shooting, to presoak the Efke IR or Rollei Infrared and let dry it in total darkness.

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I have to say that Dona is one of the more favorite models I've worked with. She's an impressively creative woman who insisted that she bring an unnamed wardrobe item and showed up with a orange crepe-paper bag for her head... and then made it work beautifully. Or who I could hand two lights to and she'll go through pose after pose. sigh I really need to work with her again.