robstrong
10-Sep-2010, 18:30
Hello all. I'm hoping you can help me diagnose some problems I've encountered with a fresh set of LF negatives. All of the enclosed were shot on a Tachihara 4x5 wood field camera with either a 135mm or 210mm Nikkor lens, generally around f/22. All were exposed in bright daylight.
Film is Kodak Ektar 100, exposed at ISO 100, and processed by Color Services Inc in Massachusetts. Scanned by me at home on an Epson V700.
From a set of ten negatives, 5 of them have some kind of light leak or general color issue that seems beyond my power to photoshop away. (I have done basic color correction on all of the images.
Problems I see on first look:
03: huge leaks top left and center.
04: vague leak left side, rays of light top center
05: lots of leak left and right; generally messed up color (this is a cornfield in the daylight)
07: rays of light top left; color a little jacked up
This was my first box of Ektar, and I just bought a set of used holders on Ebay. This is my first box of color film in Fidelity holders. (I've shot a lot of Readyload Portra, and I learned large format 5 years ago by shooting black and white film in fidelity holders).
1) Is it possible my used fidelity holders are sabotaging me?
2) Is the camera itself leaking? I tried to be careful to shade the back of the camera while the darkslide was out of the holder.
3) Is it possible my scanner or software (or my inability to use them properly) is responsible for the weird color shifts? (I can see the light leaks in the negatives, so at least that problem originated earlier in the process).
4) I loaded the film sheets into and out of the holders in a dark bag. Did I somehow mess up during that process? I've never used a dark bag before.
5) Processing problems? I have extremely high faith in Color Services, so I don't think it's this.
I'm willing to be the guy who messed up here. I just want to know what I need to do differently (or replace in the technical setup) so that I can eliminate the problems with a minimum of trial and error.
I appreciate any insights you might have. As a general index for my level of skill with this camera, with photoshop, and with this kind of photography, the portfolio at my website ( http://www.robstrong.com ) was created entirely with the Tachihara, the same lenses, and Kodak Portra readyload film. I occasionally experienced some red light leaks on images from that setup, but never at the rate I'm seeing here.
If you help me fix the problem, I'll send you a grateful postcard!
Thanks,
Rob Strong
Film is Kodak Ektar 100, exposed at ISO 100, and processed by Color Services Inc in Massachusetts. Scanned by me at home on an Epson V700.
From a set of ten negatives, 5 of them have some kind of light leak or general color issue that seems beyond my power to photoshop away. (I have done basic color correction on all of the images.
Problems I see on first look:
03: huge leaks top left and center.
04: vague leak left side, rays of light top center
05: lots of leak left and right; generally messed up color (this is a cornfield in the daylight)
07: rays of light top left; color a little jacked up
This was my first box of Ektar, and I just bought a set of used holders on Ebay. This is my first box of color film in Fidelity holders. (I've shot a lot of Readyload Portra, and I learned large format 5 years ago by shooting black and white film in fidelity holders).
1) Is it possible my used fidelity holders are sabotaging me?
2) Is the camera itself leaking? I tried to be careful to shade the back of the camera while the darkslide was out of the holder.
3) Is it possible my scanner or software (or my inability to use them properly) is responsible for the weird color shifts? (I can see the light leaks in the negatives, so at least that problem originated earlier in the process).
4) I loaded the film sheets into and out of the holders in a dark bag. Did I somehow mess up during that process? I've never used a dark bag before.
5) Processing problems? I have extremely high faith in Color Services, so I don't think it's this.
I'm willing to be the guy who messed up here. I just want to know what I need to do differently (or replace in the technical setup) so that I can eliminate the problems with a minimum of trial and error.
I appreciate any insights you might have. As a general index for my level of skill with this camera, with photoshop, and with this kind of photography, the portfolio at my website ( http://www.robstrong.com ) was created entirely with the Tachihara, the same lenses, and Kodak Portra readyload film. I occasionally experienced some red light leaks on images from that setup, but never at the rate I'm seeing here.
If you help me fix the problem, I'll send you a grateful postcard!
Thanks,
Rob Strong