This recalls this:
A rocket was launched carrying a camera with black and white film. The exposed film was ejected after the camera took pix upper atmosphere pictures of space.
When the film was developed, it was found that camera had been stopped down too far. The negatives were so underexposed they couldn't be used.
NASA or whoever the agency was, gave the negatives to a scientist in Alabama telling her anything she could do would be better than the zero information they were getting from the film.
What she did was to irradiate the b&w negatives, making the silver that was in the emulsion radioactive. Then she contacted printed the negatives using only the radiation to do the exposing. The images were adequate. Mission accomplished.
Cool story. The name of that scientist would have been a nice addition...