Sunday 8th December 2019.
The day had started well and the weather was fine enough for me to clean the car. However the rain clouds soon appeared and so I retreated for a spot of film developing. A couple of hours later saw me scanning the negatives with my Epson Perfection 370.
The scanner has a plastic negative holder that accommodates a strip of 6 negatives. After just five minutes the negatives are scanned and as I wait for the next 6 to be processed I review the first set.
It was then that the mystery started. Some of the scans had some weird marks on them, as seen in the photo below.
The next batch of scans displayed the same problem. In fact all four batches. Why?
There was nothing else to do but reach for the mouse and contact Chief Inspector Google. However the “little grey cells” were awakened and I noticed that not all the scans were affected. It only appeared in the third and fourth in each of the four batches of scans. Something else I noticed was that the film seemed to have curled much more than any of the other films I have processed.
Could it be that the film was coming into contact with the glass of the scanner, something that the negative holder was meant to prevent. But why?
On examination of the negative holder I noticed what might explain the problem.
Looking at the holder in the above photo you may notice as I did that the clip securing the film in the holder was being pushed out of its position by the curved film. This corresponded to frame three and four. However on paying more attention to the position of the film and the clip securing it in the holder I did another scan, see below.
The case was sol-ved. The “little grey cells” had triumphed! The scanner was not the culprit.
But a new case has arisen, why did the film curl so much more than previous films I have handled in exactly the same manner?
To be continued….
arhphotographic 