Nikon SB-140 Manual Recommended Films - and Other UV Films

[Andrea B.]

Here are two screen shots from page 31 of the SB-140 Manual.

I am wondering whether any of these film still exist today?

 

UV Films Mentioned: 

• Kodak Spectroscopic Type 103-O & Type 103-F
• Neopan SS
• Tri-X
• Technical Pan 2415

 

IR Films:

• Kodak High Speed Infrared Film 2481
• Sakura Infrared 750
• Kodak Echtachrome Infrared Film 2236

 

 

 

[Wayne Harridge]

Kodak Tri-X is definitely still available in various formats.  I wonder if the "newer" T-grain films (Kodak T-Max, Ilford Delta) have a different UV response?

 

[Wayne Harridge]

43 minutes ago, Wayne Harridge said:

Kodak Tri-X is definitely still available in various formats.  I wonder if the "newer" T-grain films (Kodak T-Max, Ilford Delta) have a different UV response?

 

Ok, a small amount of searching yielded these nicely detailed specs:

 

Tri-X:            https://125px.com/docs/film/kodak/f4017-2016.pdf  

T-Max 400:  https://125px.com/docs/film/kodak/f4043_TMax_400-2016.pdf

 

See page 7 of each doc for spectral sensitivity curves.  Note that the curve for Tri-X is shown down to 300nm while for T-Max 400 it is only shown down to ~365nm, dunno if this implies that there is little response below 365nm or that it just wasn't measured.

I also checked out a few Ilford films but they only had a "wedge spectrogram" for 2850K tungsten light so not very useful to assess UV response.

 

This article has a good discussion of UV photography with monochrome film: https://medicalphotography.com.au/Article_01/08.html

 

 

[photoni]

9 hours ago, Andrea B. said:

I am wondering whether any of these film still exist today?

 

I have created these combined charts taking into consideration only ilford and rollei photographic films which are currently the easiest to find.
Speaking with a laboratory owner he pointed out that the graphs are almost always made with artificial light not with the sun,

and that the spectral sensitivity in the blue and UV zone is often not considered or eliminated because it is considered "harmful"

and in fact it is recommended to always use an anti UV or yellow filter when shooting in BW

... especially if you use old optics with few lenses and without anti-reflective treatment

... just the ones we are looking for  :)))

 

 

 

[nfoto]

When I acquired my first UV-Nikkor (early '90s) I received the complete kit with the filters for the lens and the SB-140 flash. I used the setup briefly with Tri-X, but had few facilities for procesing bv/w myself at that time. so I tried first Ilford XP (not sure this was the original XP or XP2) and got quite OK results. There still were C-41 labs around at at time.  Kodak infrared Ektachrome yielded "weird" results with the Nikon FF filter, which are understandable today as we know all about IR contamination and its degrading impact on UV photos. The FF filter bled IR massively. Thus exit IE.

 

I ended up using Fuji RTP-64 tungsten film and used that for years later, until digital replaced film technology for me. Let me see if I can pull some examples from the archives.

[Andrea B.]

Did you use the Fuji RTP-64 for UV or IR? (or both??)

[nfoto]

RTP64 ended its response in the red. No IR response.

[OlDoinyo]

The batch of RTP-64 I got my hands on was overcoated--very low sensitivity to UV and impossible to get a pure UV image without red contamination; but I did get a few interesting hybrid images.