I wanted to find out what Kodak High Speed Infrared would do, and this was my result.
Sadly my box of KHSI film is quite old and that had a significant and unfortunate effect. It expired in 1989 and has age related fog. It’s still just usable for general work and landscapes (impressively so) however astrophotography was asking a lot of it in its current state. In an attempt to boost contrast I also gave extra development and that didn’t do the film any favors either. Exposure time was one hour with the lens at f/5.6, a dark red B+W 091 filter was also used; my primary interest was to see if this combination would cut through my city light pollution.
There is a faint image of Sagittarius along with some of the milky way just barely visible. I rather inelegantly did some further contrast adjustments to the digital photo of the negative bring out a bit more detail. If the film was still fresh and new, perhaps the result would have been much better. We’d all like for things to work perfectly, yet less than ideal results are no less useful. I’ve been curious for a very long time what an infrared film would record!
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