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Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

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Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever put the fixer in first? That's fun too.

C41 minilabs won't generally let you in normal use. The Fuji machines won't allow you to put the replenisher cartridge in backwards due to mechanical blocks (poka-yoke). The only way you could pull this off is mixing up the chemistry during a dump-and-fill (chemistry restart).

The Fuji machines might not have had this option, but the Kodak machines I worked with could all be filled with the wrong chemicals. This was fine if you filled once a day and did all of the daily tests: it wasn't so wonderful when they switched to fill-as-needed or if a new person got mixed up.

It didn't really improve when the place I worked upgraded their machines: The chemicals mixed differently, but you could still mess up developing film. The digital film scanning was pretty nice, though.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted the same comment yesterday and for some reason got downvoted to oblivion. SSDs do not rely on bits being correct. Raw bit error rates in multi-level flash are generally over 1%. In other words if you read a 4K page you are guaranteed to get several wrong bits. The only reason a of it works at all is because of sophisticated error-correcting codes.

I posted the same comment yesterday and for some reason got downvoted to oblivion. Probably because of the "90% bit error rate" part of the comment. Obviously SSDs can't tolerate anything close to 90% bit errors. If that kind of error rate could be corrected in the general case, it would have profound implications for information theory in general, not just hard drive manufacturing. It would be equivalent to a data c…

Your logic is flawed and/or the statement misleading.

While storing more than a single bit with bit error rate >= 50% does require at least some error modeling, it does not mean profound implications on information theory¹.

Yes, normal SSDs would not have raw bit error rate anywhere near 90%. Still, I recall tales of flash media approaching raw 90% error rate - mostly shitty SD cards making use of the not-completely-trashed sectors of scrap high-capacity chips with heaps of ECC.

¹ unless you really do mean general (theoretical) 90% error correction, which would indeed imply things such as P = NP and P != NP, yet it cannot be applied as an argument on specific real-world errors.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#163
post #158
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find the act of throwing away the garbage shots to be paralyzing with digital. If you have 8 nearly identical shots, which do you keep? And the act of examining and comparing to make a choice based on some minute detail drastically slows down the whole cataloging and editing process. It's the paralysis of choice. Less is literally more, and I personally don't find an evening of spending a couple hours pa…

-I had the same problem - too many cameras - as there was a time when you could buy film cameras for a song. I have since pared down a bit (not sufficiently, though - the collector gene is strong in this one) - Nikon F (various bodies both F and D, and more optics than I care to think about), Leica M (primary body being the camera Leica ought to have made - the Zeiss Ikon ZM, but also an M4 for the times when old sch…

RFs are nice and especially if you like to shoot wide lenses they tend to be more accurate than SLRs (although I do have a split prism screen for mine, which helps a lot). The P67 is nice for portraits though, longer lenses are tricky on rangefinders. If you are a masochist and like to shoot wildlife/etc on MF/LF, the P67 system is by far the most comprehensive and affordable.

Portability is really the problem with the P67. I find myself drawn to cameras that pack a big punch in a small package and the P67 just is a physically very large camera. I like my Fuji GS645 folder for travelling and would like a GF670, I snagged a 120-converted Kodak Medalist (heliar-type lens), and I have been trying to get set up with a compact 4x5 setup. I just got that Polaroid and I have some Grafmatics for it, maybe someday I'll grab a Pocket Gowland to go with it.

I wouldn't mind a G690, but the lenses are fairly scarce and expensive. It is also a surprisingly big camera (assuming it's like the fixed-lens versions). Like, it doesn't look that big in pictures, until you realize that the camera body is about a 50% larger diagonal than your iphone plus. It is actually comical in person, not much smaller than a P67 at all. But, much lighter than a P67, which helps.

Leica is too expensive for my blood although I do have a Nicca body and a Nikkor 28/3.5 LTM for it. I particularly liked that lens on the Nikonos and wanted a copy that didn't have the underwater mounting/scale focus. For really low light shooting I like the Yashica Lynx 14E and the Olympus XA with film pushed to 1600. The 14E is the fastest lens on a fixed-lens RF ever and has a leaf shutter to reduce vibrations, while the XA has a wide lens, a piezo release, and a leaf shutter. Both do well with handholdability at slow speeds. The Olympus XA can be modified to support 1600 by spinning the paper disc over the meter one stop further so that all speeds read one stop faster, the 14E is full manual.

I mostly don't do 35mm SLRs anymore. Digital does that stuff better, so I do digital for that (I can adapt old lenses to my NEX camera) and MF/LF for fun. Easier to scan too, 35mm really needs a pretty decent scanner to get full quality, or wet printing. Trying to get set up for a basement darkroom, too many projects too little money.

I don't mind GAS. I admit I like the collecting too, it's a hobby. And I don't mind having "special purpose" lenses or cameras that do one niche thing for me. It's nice to have the right tool for the job.

Yeah, the late 2000s were a wild time for cameras. All the pros were dumping their film gear for digital, the financial crisis caused people to dump grandpa's old camera junk for a song and meant little competition, and hipsters hadn't latched onto film gear yet. I picked up my first 6x7 (non-MLU) for $300... with a meter prism and three lenses. That stuff has roughly tripled in value since those days, I think.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#164
post #83
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? As someone who shoots film, there are a number of reasons, one being the asthetic you get from film that you can't (even with x hours in Photoshop) get from digital. I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. Film also more or less forces yo…

An 8" x 10" digital sensor would take a whole silicon wafer. Doubt you'll see one, ever.

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Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#165
post #132
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LargeSense LS911 features a single shot 9×11-inch monochrome CMOS sensor with a 75-micron pixel size, a high base sensitivity of ISO 2100, and a maximum sensitivity of ISO 6400. https://petapixel.com/2018/04/17/largesense-unveils-worlds-f...

This thing only shoots 12mp images (and only in black and white). Nothing like what you'd get from an actual large format film camera.

The photographer who created it uses it for some final work, but also for setting up shots and switching to film for the final shot.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#166

My first job over a decade ago was managing a photo lab. The x-ray machines would often damage film that people traveled with. Amateur photographers just weren't aware. The damage typically looks like white fuzzy diagonal lines across the image. It's not enough to completely destroy a picture, but it'll ruin it. The most common widespread damage we saw were people that bought like 50 disposable cameras for their Cari…

Ever put the fixer in first? That's fun too.

I'm a little late to respond but the best story I have is from another lab supervisor I spoke to. Wet minilabs all have an effluent tank that fills up with the spent chemicals. This is after a cartridge to collect all the silver.

Remember we call one of the chemicals 'bleach'. It's a bad name. This effluent tank usually gets dumped out in a sink near the lab when it's full or at the end of the day. I say that bleach is a bad name because C-41 process contains ammonium ferric PDTA, which I believe is pretty close to ammonium iron sulfate. (not a chemist)

Anyways, the store I mentioned had a mess that needed cleaning at the end of the day, so the kids got out cleaners containing bleach and mopped up the floor... then proceeded to dump the cleaner down the same sink as the effluent. This readily produced noxious fumes (possibly mustard gas) that forced a store evacuation. Store was closed for around 2 days as hazmat crews made sure the place was safe to go into.

Nobody was hurt but not a great look....

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