Nanosecond photography at 106 μm using silver halide film

Little-exploited properties of silver halide films are used to record the spatial distribution of 10.6 microm-CO(2) laser pulses with a dynamic range of at least 20. The IR radiation is shown to sensitize commonly available silver halide films to subsequent visible radiation. A permanent, high-resolution image is thus formed of radiation too low in energy to eject directly photoelectrons. The method is calibrated for the film found most useful for this technique.