Freezer film storage

[semi-ambivalent]

Suppose you were going to build a small, lead-shielded film storage box in your freezer in the shed. Anybody know how thick the lead would have to be to stop your typical cosmic ray? A couple mm's enough?

s-a

[ntenny]

Nope. Cosmic rays are mostly high-energy protons, which can penetrate multiple centimeters of lead. (Various citations available through Google, largely scientific papers from the 1930s when there was a bit of a boom in cosmic-ray research, but most of them are pay-per-view for the details. The abstracts usually contain vague statements like "not much loss of energy".)

-NT

[Sirius Glass]

I have not needed to do anything but keep unopened film in the freezer. If the film has been opened, put it in a zip lock freezer bag at room temperture first.

Steve

[BradS]

The bottom drawer of the fridge has always been completley satisfactory for my needs. Ther is certainly no need to freeze film.

[Brian C. Miller]

The only way from keeping your film from being degraded by cosmic rays is to move it to a different dimension, where cosmic rays don't exist.

I have used frozen film 30 years old, and it had no age degradation. It was stored locally in the Seattle area, in a normal freezer. I really suspect cosmic rays have little to do with film degradation, and more to do with local background radiation. I'm guessing that film storage in Nevada is a serious problem.

What film are you trying to store?

[jp498]

3' of earth is equivalent to quite a bit of lead or steel for shield from cosmic rays. google and wikipedia it.... However, storing material underground could also expose it to radon or mineral radiation and potential flooding.

[Photo Engineer]

A salt mine is ideal!

PE

[semi-ambivalent]

The only way from keeping your film from being degraded by cosmic rays is to move it to a different dimension, where cosmic rays don't exist.

I have used frozen film 30 years old, and it had no age degradation. It was stored locally in the Seattle area, in a normal freezer. I really suspect cosmic rays have little to do with film degradation, and more to do with local background radiation. I'm guessing that film storage in Nevada is a serious problem.

What film are you trying to store?

OK everybody, I get the drift It's Tri-X, and it's going in the freezer because there's not enough room in the fridge. Point well taken, PE, but people didn't trust the WIP very much either, did they.

s-a

[Photo Engineer]

Since there are about 30 acronyms using WIP, which one of them did you mean to refer to? I take "Weapon Impact Point" Kinda nice or perhaps "Women in Photography", as it is more on-topic.



PE

[MattKing]

I wonder if a thick layer of Twinkies could stop cosmic rays.

It could kill two birds with one stone .

What do you think, PE?