a photograph and radiation

[starless]

© Igor Kostin

I've always been fascinated by this image of the so called "liquidators" working on the roof of the Chernobyl reactor after the accident.

According to the caption, the white streaks on the bottom are "due to the high levels of radiation emanating from below"

However I thought that the image projected onto the negative inside cameras is flipped upside down. Therefore, those streaks should have been emanating from the sky portion of the photograph, because that edge of the negative was closer to the ground.

Am I missing something?

 

[sebastel]

no, you're not missing anything concerning the radiation.
actually, high level of radiation should show as enhanced fogging of the film.

to me, this looks like uneven development - the streaks coincide with the film perforation.

 

[ForestCap]

It looks like over-agitation to me

 

[grouchos_tash]

The idea of that much radiation makes me agitated, no wonder the neg is streaky.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Exposure to the water with high temperature at any stage of developing will do this.
Common problem with SU, FSU water lines. It might go from cold to hot several times within few minutes.

 

[blue4130]

It looks like a simple case of bromide drag.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=bromide+drag&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=HSAcV9uvAseEgAb15YeYBA

 

[JOCO34]

I've worked for the Department of Energy for over 30 years so I have some experience with radiation and its effects. Any source from below above sideways or any direction would not be focused as a point source so it would not resolve as streaks on the film but a general fogging of the film. A point source is like a flashlight which would give you shadows. Radiation from a contamination event would be much more diffuse and if it was strong enough to penetrate the camera body it would just overcome the emulsion of the film and fog it. I did not stay in a Holiday Inn last night.

 

[farlymac]

People make up all kinds of things about photos on the internet.

PF

 

[Pablito]

People make up all kinds of things about photos on the internet.

PF

Any evidence to prove that? 🙄

 

[x-ray]

I've worked for the Department of Energy for over 30 years so I have some experience with radiation and its effects. Any source from below above sideways or any direction would not be focused as a point source so it would not resolve as streaks on the film but a general fogging of the film. A point source is like a flashlight which would give you shadows. Radiation from a contamination event would be much more diffuse and if it was strong enough to penetrate the camera body it would just overcome the emulsion of the film and fog it. I did not stay in a Holiday Inn last night.

This is exactly right. I work with x-Rays all the time and it would most definately be an overall uniform fog if it were environmental. This is over agitation in the developer.

 

[starless]

So I guess the myth that those streaks were due to radiation is BUSTED now.
The negatives could well have been fogged, but it is difficult to judge by looking at some bad scans online.

 

[starless]

People make up all kinds of things about photos on the internet.

PF

I think the claim might have originated from the photographer himself. My Russian is not very good to look for the source, but here is some background from an online article in English:

"The pictures that Kostin captured in those hazy seconds on April 26, 1986, show workers in crude, homemade lead vests and thin cotton coveralls clearing the deadly rubble with their hands. Two days before the Soviet government would acknowledge that anything had gone wrong, Kostin had already documented the Ukrainians' heroic but primitive struggle to contain the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.

As the prints emerged from the developer, he could clearly see the shadowy radioactive vapors that had scorched his negatives.

For Kostin, the first photographer to arrive at Chernobyl, those ghostly streaks were the only sighting of an invisible killer that would stalk him the rest of his life, sapping his strength and his mind."

 

[grouchos_tash]

I took some film on holiday that hadn't been used on my last trip. When I got home all of the films that had been 'on holiday' twice were fogged. It was uniform in that they were very low contrast (none of the 'whites' were 'white'). However, the beach near me must be as radioactive as Chernobyl as I developed a film with the same streaks 😉

 

[JOCO34]

I took some film on holiday that hadn't been used on my last trip. When I got home all of the films that had been 'on holiday' twice were fogged. It was uniform in that they were very low contrast (none of the 'whites' were 'white'). However, the beach near me must be as radioactive as Chernobyl as I developed a film with the same streaks 😉

Do you live near Fukushima? Most likely they are errors in development or light leaks somewhere in the process.

 

[Ronald M]

Could be source of radiation was partially blocked by some building structure.

 

[starless]

Could be source of radiation was partially blocked by some building structure.

My point was that even if we accept that radiation from below can create streaks like these (which has already been refuted), their position shouldn't be on the bottom of the image but on the top, since the top side of the negative was closer to the ground.

 

[Highway 61]

I have watched a TV show featuring Igor Kostin a few months after he went to the disaster zone in 1986. We could see his Nikon F3 then. The camera was beginning to turn itself into dust. That was extremely scary.
RIP Igor Kostin, you were a great man.

 

[starless]

I have watched a TV show featuring Igor Kostin a few months after he went to the disaster zone in 1986. We could see his Nikon F3 then. The camera was beginning to turn itself into dust. That was extremely scary.
RIP Igor Kostin, you were a great man.

From wikipedia, source not listed:

"The motor of his cameras began to exhibit symptoms of radioactive-caused degradation after around 20 shots. The helicopter returned to Kiev after the cameras′ failure. Kostin managed to develop the films, only to realise that all but one was unsalvageable - most of the films were affected by the high level of radiation, that caused the photographs to appear entirely black, resembling a film that was exposed to light pre-maturely."

 

[sevo]

Could be source of radiation was partially blocked by some building structure.

It would be very hard to define a building structure and radiation source that combine to form a pattern that seems to originate from the film perforation - and near impossible for it to happen naturally with similar results across various shots from a hand-held camera.

 

[grouchos_tash]

Do you live near Fukushima? Most likely they are errors in development or light leaks somewhere in the process.

The film had been x-rayed four times 😉

The beach photos had been over agitated (when I was trialling a new dev method).