Kodak Plus-X Aerecon II (film 3404)

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Hey Folks,

I'm the proud owner of 200 feet of this film. It's a specialized aerographic film designed for high and medium altitude photography. Until I buy a plane, I want to experiment with it in my trusty Cannon. Some funky features: ESTAR based for machine processing and dimentional stability, extended infrared sensativity to cut through haze(but not too much looking at the curves), and 5 years old. Does anybody have a starting point for exposure and small tank development?? Best I could get out of Kodak is a 200 ASA, but they warn you that is only when flying at several thousand feet above the ground. I've got some high capacity reels that should handle the thin base pretty well I think. I only hope it doesn't take 199 feet to get printable negs out of it! Well, at least it was not too expensive ($15.00 on Ebay).

-- Daniel Goodale-Porter (goodaleporter@aol.com), October 27, 2000

Answers

Try exposing and developing it like regular Plus-X. Kodak's (and Agfa's) aerial recommendations for Black and White usually assume about one stop less exposure than normal for terrestrial photography and development to a higher gamma to improve contrast.

-- John Lehman (al7jj@yahoo.com), October 27, 2000.

Update: Well 200' of this stuff fits fine into my bulk loader, but only without the metal reel it comes on. Had to hand wind it on an old 100' core I had. Took a while! This ESTAR base is weird! Like working with paper. I'm loading cassettes. Can fit 72 exposures very nicely in one can! Let you know my eposure and developement experiments. I'll start at the regular plus-x tables and we'll see!

-- Daniel Goodale-Porter (goodaleporter@aol.com), November 01, 2000.

update

Well, all in all a pretty good film. Exposed and developed as Plus-X pan, but the images were a little thin. Exposed at 100 asa and developed as plus x. Right on. The base is a little hard to work with, but i'm getting better with practice. Overall, a good source of good general purpose film, I'd do it again (after I ran out of this roll, which will take a while).

-- Daniel Goodale-Porter (daniel.goodale@tsbshelby.ngb.army.mil), December 15, 2000.

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