Hairy Gates With 7212

Shooting in the Nevada desert for several days and had big trouble with hairs in the gate on 7212. Static electricity? New stock is hair prone? Shot some 7246 under the same conditions and no problem.

Norman Bonney
DP
San Francisco

Norman Bonney wrote :

>Shooting in the Nevada desert for several days and had big trouble with >hairs in the gate on 7212. Static electricity?

Can you tell if the "hairs" are emulsion piling up in the gate? Perhaps a problem with the stock when it was slit? Check the emulsion batch numbers and call your rep. Since this is a new stock maybe there was a problem when production was ramping up.

Tom McDonnell
DP/Operator
New Orleans, La

Norman Bonney wrote :

>New stock is hair prone?

Your loader has probably discovered that little cellophane packet of hair which Kodak now thoughtfully provides in every can of '12.

Dan Drasin
Producer/DP
Marin County, CA

>Shooting in the Nevada desert for several days and had big trouble with >hairs in the gate on 7212.

Norman,

I have shot over 60,000 feet of 7212 recently and have not had a single hair in the gate of my XTR prod. There wasn't any emulsion build-up either.

We were shooting in warm and somewhat humid Florida conditions.

Hope this helps.

yours,

Darren Lew
DP/NYC

If you feel some rolls of film have excessive hairs on gate-checks, try to capture some of the hairs on the sticky side of a "Post-It" note, and return to Kodak for microscopic analysis. If possible, save the balance of the unexposed roll for analysis, as well as any other rolls with the same strip number.

Many times "hairs" are picked up by the roll from handling in a linty changing bag or a dirty darkroom. Very dry desert conditions allow more static charge, allowing this ambient dirt to stick to the roll easier.

Any issue with finishing is usually associated with a particular slitter knive (strip number) or perforator, and can be traced using the full code-emulsion-roll-strip-cut ID number:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/sizesP.shtml#p

John Pytlak
Eastman Kodak Company

>Very dry desert conditions allow more static charge, allowing this >ambient dirt to stick to the roll easier.

Where I am in Saskatchewan, it tends to be very dry and extremely staticky, especially in the winter... And I've never run into this problem. So I'm guessing it's not very common!

(When printing in the darkroom, I go completely insane trying to get dust off of negatives or transparencies because of this - the second it's clean, another half-dozen dust motes land and stick. Same with the CCD on my Nikon D100 - once I get it clean it's great, but it can be a chore. So it IS a static-filled environment...

John, I'm eager to know if Kodak has actually solved the sensor-dust issue in the 14... It sure would make a nice big brother for my D100

George Hupka
Director/DP
Downstream Pictures
Saskatoon, Canada