Does Tape Glow?

[cliveh]

Okay, I file this in the uneasy category of Things That Don't Make Sense But Were Nonetheless Empirically Observed: When separating 120 film from its paper backing in my home darkroom, I would swear I see a faint glow as I pull off the tape.

Now, there's no explanation I can come up with, unless there's some kind of micro-chemical reaction of the adhesive hitting the air and giving off a tiny puff of luminescence, but I figured I'd ask you guys if I was crazy.

I think it happens with all film, but the most recent experience and the one I'm surest about was Fuji Neopan Acros. Not so much when I pulled off the paper backing, but when I removed the UPC-code strip of tape at the very end/beginning of the roll, I'm sure I saw something. Total darkness, in my bathroom, with my pupils presumably fully dilated from hanging out in total darkness for the five or so minutes it took to get the film spooled onto the reel up to that point. And no, I have no superhuman powers that I'm aware of.

Has this happened to you?

It will have zero to minimal effect. Exposure is Illumination X Time and the illumination is very minimal and the time is very short.

[Vaughn]

I like seeing the glow -- it tells me that all is okay and the earth is still spinning even though I am in a dark little room.

[Sirius Glass]

Triboluminescence

[desertratt]

In my day, which is long since gone, the olde tyme news photographers used to glow around 4 p.m. every day. I think they kept a bottle of "glow" in the darkroom.

[bsdunek]

In my day, which is long since gone, the olde tyme news photographers used to glow around 4 p.m. every day. I think they kept a bottle of "glow" in the darkroom.

I've always called it 'Scotch' or 'Bourbon', probably the same thing. After a while I have trouble focusing the enlarger.

[Steve Smith]

If you remove the tape slowly, the effect is decimated or eliminated.

Do you know what decimated means? It means reduced by 10%


Steve.

[AgX]

This is surprising.

In German it means just to reduce.

The original meaning was to reduce by 10% (thus yielding 90%).

[Doremus Scudder]

Do you know what decimated means? It means reduced by 10% Steve.

As long as the language police have chimed in...

The word decimate literally means to kill one in ten, describing the practice of the Roman military, which would punish disobedient or substandard units by randomly selecting 10% of the men in the unit and putting them to death (presumably this motivated the other 90% to get with it...).

In its more modern and extended meaning, it can be defined as: killing large numbers of things (as in "The population of darkroom mice has been decimated in recent years due to their getting caught in light traps."), or it can mean large scale destruction or severe reduction ("Film manufacture has been decimated in the last decade." [just had to use the Latin "ten" twice...], or "Al Qaeda has been decimated." [Pres. Obama] ).

Note that "decimate" always has a negative implication, that of destruction or death; it is not simply a neutral 10% reduction. I'd never say "I've decimated my weight." if I lost 10% of my bulk... that would be positive, wouldn't it?

The above from Cambridge and Longmans.

Best,

Doremus

[Steve Smith]

The word decimate literally means to kill one in ten, describing the practice of the Roman military, which would punish disobedient or substandard units by randomly selecting 10% of the men in the unit and putting them to death (presumably this motivated the other 90% to get with it...).

That was my understanding too.


Steve.

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Do you know what decimated means? It means reduced by 10%


Steve.

Do you know what pedantic means?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate