Expired Film Day: Bonus Feature

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Lee
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I've already posted the images in the Expired Film Day 2017 thread, but when the processed negs arrived in the post I noticed a weird, wavy line through the unexposed parts of the film. My initial thought was water marking or some other processing thing, but the perfect wave through the whole film made me investigate further.
It turns out that it's probably x-ray damage, which I've never seen on my films before. The things is, I've no idea when or where this happened. As far as I know this film has been in a drawer for the duration, but I guess it's been somewhere and back with me at some point. Or someone has xrayed my house! ;)

Anyway, I thought it was worthy of a scan and share for the novelty value, and to confirm that it is xray damage, not something else.
 
So it is a wavy line... so must be a narrow X-ray beam crossing the rolled spool at a slant? Weird; most things being X-rayed would be bigger than that and therefore I would assume the coverage are would be much greater. It's possible that @Woodsy might have a suggestion?
 
So it is a wavy line... so must be a narrow X-ray beam crossing the rolled spool at a slant? Weird; most things being X-rayed would be bigger than that and therefore I would assume the coverage are would be much greater. It's possible that @Woodsy might have a suggestion?

I'm assuming x-ray because the pattern is consistent for the full length of the film, and the pattern matches the images in this Kodak document.
 
So first thing's first: Anyone getting science news from the Express deserves everything they get ;)

Well this is a new one for me; I've never seen anything like that before. It should be understood that generating a narrow distribution of x rays is not particularly easy to do outside of specific equipment, and I would agree with @ChrisR's post. The periodicity of the line does appear consistent with the scenario @ChrisR stated as well, but again, to get a narrow effect like that, you'd probably know if you were near somewhere that could produce this. Further, having worked briefly at a facility which can produce large amounts of X rays, the level of paranoia that is exercised to shield the people in the facility (let alone those outside) from the emission is quite hilarious. I am by no means any form of expert when it comes to x rays though so I'll clear the floor :)
 
I think from the Kodak document you cited it might be that the film went through hold baggage scanning with one of the CAT-type scanners they mentioned; it might go some way to explaining the collimated band? Perhaps it happened before the film got to you (except I see it's XP2 so maybe not from overseas!).

"Fog from the CAT scan type of scanner typically appears as soft-edged bands 1/4 to 3/8 inch (1 to 1.5 cm) wide. The orientation of the fog stripe depends on the orientation of the film relative to the X-ray beam. The banding may be linear or wavy and can run lengthwise or horizontally on the film. It can also undulate, depending on the combination of the angle of exposure and the multiple laps of film on the roll."

They do talk about "other conditions that resemble X-ray fog" but from the description this seems to resemble general X-ray fogging rather than the wavy band type.
 
I think from the Kodak document you cited it might be that the film went through hold baggage scanning with one of the CAT-type scanners they mentioned; it might go some way to explaining the collimated band? Perhaps it happened before the film got to you (except I see it's XP2 so maybe not from overseas!).

"Fog from the CAT scan type of scanner typically appears as soft-edged bands 1/4 to 3/8 inch (1 to 1.5 cm) wide. The orientation of the fog stripe depends on the orientation of the film relative to the X-ray beam. The banding may be linear or wavy and can run lengthwise or horizontally on the film. It can also undulate, depending on the combination of the angle of exposure and the multiple laps of film on the roll."

They do talk about "other conditions that resemble X-ray fog" but from the description this seems to resemble general X-ray fogging rather than the wavy band type.

It is a very good match to that kodak doc. and example images. I'm racking my brain to remember what travel I was doing since ~2006 and yes, it's possible that it could've gone through a hold baggage scan.

Thanks for all the replies and insight, as I said, it's a nice little bonus find on top of the whole Expired Film Day project.
And, I can sell my alien abduction evidence to The Express ;)
 
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