are black plastic 35mm cans light tight?

Yes. I use them to store unprocessed film not in cassettes, on its way to the lab. I just tape the top closed and remind the technician that the film is not in a cassette. The reason I do this, is when I use my KMZ FT-2, which uses its own proprietary cassettes, that I would hate to loose. No spares available!
 
not that i'm going to make a regular habit of this (my XA stripped out and i had to rescue) but do you ever get scratches doing this?
 
seems like they should be but i didn't want to find out the hard way.

I wouldn't count on it. I read once (sorry can't remember where) that they are not good enough for storing film that's out of its metal cassette. I think at the time it said that Kodak ones were better than Ilford which definitely were not suitable. Over the years the containers might have changed.

It probably depends on the amount of light in the ambient, as well as the length of time.

I think you need to do a test.
 
The black canisters are light-tight.

FWIW, film casettes themselves are barely light-tight. I've learned not to fiddle with them when loaded :) APS are 10 times worse than 35mm. That's why they put them in a canister.
 
I wouldn't count on it. I read once (sorry can't remember where) that they are not good enough for storing film that's out of its metal cassette. I think at the time it said that Kodak ones were better than Ilford which definitely were not suitable. Over the years the containers might have changed.

It probably depends on the amount of light in the ambient, as well as the length of time.

I think you need to do a test.

I agree, I think it's a matter of degree. If you shine a 150-amp carbon arc light on them ,they are probably not light-tight. But as a precaution against lightleaks into a questionable cassette, yes.
 
I've used plastic 35mm cans from Kalt before. Never had a problem with light leaks, after a couple uses though dust started to become an issue.
 
The black Kodak ones are light tight. That's how Kodak ship(ped) its infrared film, which is extremely sensitive to any visible light.
 
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