I just got done looking at the "black" felt light traps on about 50 various rolls of film canisters. Looking at the felt through an IR sensitive camcorder, the felts showed up as either black (absorbs IR light) or as white (reflects IR light). Kodak, Fuji, Polaroid, Meijer (a midwest department store chain in the USA) Signature (a cheap mail order film), & Sharp ( a generic film) film casettes had blazing white film traps under IR illumination. Kodak 70mm casettes had a white felt under IR illumination.
Rite Aid (A North American Drug Store) had black felt traps under IR illumination.
On the other hand, Kalt bulk loadable film casettes, and Adorama generic bulk loadable casettes showed a mixture of black and white felt traps under IR illumination. About 20% of the Kalt bulk loadable casettes were black (under IR illumination), while the rest were white ( under IR illumination). One Kalt casette even had a mixture of black and white felts on the same casette (under IR illumination). The top felt was black while the bottom felt was white. The Adorama casettes were about 90% black and the rest were white (under IR illumination). I bought about 100 of these Adorama casettes about 4 years ago. Since there is no consistent manufacturer that makes black felt light trap canisters, one will just have to determine this by using an IR camcorder.
To get a better look at the effectiveness of each felt light trap, I took one white felt canister and one black felt canister and cut them in half using a high speed Dremel rotary tool. I then placed each half of the casette over my camcorder lens so that I was looking out through the film trap.
The 35mm casettes with white felts leaked IR light quite badly. The 35mm casettes with black felts DID NOT leak IR light!
So obviously a simple change in felt materials would allow one to load Kodak HIE in daylight!
But I can't just end this message here, because someone would quickly point out that Kodak IR HIE film "light pipes" IR light into a film casette just like a fiberoptic cable moves light through a clear piece of plastic. I looked at this "light piping" effect through my camcorder and while it is true that the film does this, it is not a very strong effect. I doubt that it would even fog to the first frame on a 35mm roll of film. The reason I say this is because I have sucessfully loaded 220 Kodak HIE (cut down from 70mm stock) under subdued light inside, and in deep shadows outside, with out major problems. The edges get some fogging but it hardly ever gets into the image area, and usually just leaks around the edges of the film, if that. Since 70mm and 35mm IR films have the same emulsion and all 35mm cameras advance the film two or three frames before the first exposure the "light piping" won't be noticible.
So if you want to load Kodak HIE in the day light, buy yourself some black felt bulk loadable casettes and a 150' bulk roll of Kodak HIE. Not only will you save money bulk loading, but you can finally leave that changing bag at home.
Peace Rolland Elliot
If you try this method yourself please let us know how you get on.
Last Updated: Saturday, January 29, 2000
Part of the Infrared FAQ located at CoCam Photo.