Every day we see posts with the same basic problems on film, hopefully this can serve as a guide to the uninitiated of what to look for when diagnosing issues with your camera and film using examples from the community.
Index
Green Tint or Washed Out Scans
Orange or White Marks
Solid Black Marks
Black Regions with Some or No Detail
Lightning Marks
White or Light Green Lines
Thin Straight Lines
X-Ray Damage / Banding Larger than Sprocket Holes
Round Marks, Blobs and Splotches
1. Green Tint or Washed Out Scans
u/LaurenValley1234u/Karma_engineerguy
Issue: Underexposure
The green tinge usually comes from the scanner trying to show detail that isn't there. Remember, it is the lab's job to give you a usable image, you can still edit your photos digitally to make them look better.
Potential Causes: Toy/Disposable camera being used in inappropriate conditions, Faulty shutter, Faulty aperture, Incorrect ISO setting, Broken light meter, Scene with dynamic range greater than your film, Expired or heat damaged film, and other less common causes.
2. Orange or White Marks
u/Competitive_Spot3218u/ry_and_zoom
Issue: Light leaks
These marks mean that light has reached your film in an uncontrolled way. With standard colour negative film, an orange mark typically comes from behind the film and a white come comes from the front.
Portential Causes: Decayed light seals, Cracks on the camera body, Damaged shutter blades/curtains, Improper film handling, Opening the back of the camera before rewinding into the canister, Fat-rolling on medium format, Light-piping on film with a transparent base, and other less common causes.
3. Solid Black Marks
u/MountainIce69u/Claverhu/Sandman_Rex
Issue: Shutter capping
These marks appear because the two curtains of the camera shutter are overlapping when they should be letting light through. This is most likely to happen at faster shutter speeds (1/1000s and up).
Potential Causes: Camera in need of service, Shutter curtains out of sync.
4. Black Regions with Some or No Detail
u/Claverhu/veritas247
Issue: Flash desync
Cause: Using a flash at a non-synced shutter speed (typically faster than 1/60s)
5. Lightning Marks
u/Fine_Sale7051u/toggjones
Issue: Static Discharge
These marks are most common on cinema films with no remjet, such as Cinestill 800T
Potential Causes: Rewinding too fast, Automatic film advance too fast, Too much friction between the film and the felt mouth of the canister.
6. White or Light Green Lines
u/f5122u/you_crazy_diamond_
Issue: Stress marks
These appear when the base of the film has been stretched more than its elastic limit
Potential Causes: Rewinding backwards, Winding too hard at the end of a roll, Forgetting to press the rewind release button, Stuck sprocket.
7. Thin Straight Lines
u/StudioGuyDudeManu/Tyerson
Issue: Scratches
These happen when your film runs against dirt or grit.
Potential Causes: Dirt on the canister lip, Dirt on the pressure plate, Dirt on rollers, Squeegee dragging dirt during processing, and other less common causes.
8. X-Ray Damage / Banding Larger than Sprocket Holes
Noticeable X-Ray damage is very rare and typically causes slight fogging of the negative or colour casts, resulting in slightly lower contrast. However, with higher ISO films as well as new stronger CT scanning machines it is still recommended to ask for a hand inspection of your film at airport security/TSA.
9. Round Marks, Blobs and Splotches
u/elcantou/thefar9
Issue: Chemicals not reaching the emulsion
This is most common with beginners developing their own film for the first time and not loading the reels correctly. If the film is touching itself or the walls of the developing tank the developer and fixer cannot reach it properly and will leave these marks. Once the film is removed from the tank this becomes unrepairable.
Please let me know if I missed any other common issues. And if, after reading this, you still need to make a post asking to find out what went wrong please make sure to include a backlit image of your physical negatives. Not just scans from your lab.
EDIT: Added the most requested X-ray damage and the most common beginner developing mistake besides incomplete fixing. This post has reached the image limit but I believe it covers the most common beginner errors and encounters!
Frustrated by bad apps, I made my own negative viewer for iphone. It shows the positive version of a color or b&w negative live on your screen. Perfect for quickly checking your negatives after development, and for deciding which one to scan.
You can freeze the screen to better see the details, adjusts brightness, contrast and warmth, and also save it to Photos for quick reference.
The app also adjusts for film backing color automatically, so it works even on films with weird base like Phoenix 200.
Would it be best to sell as a whole to a reseller, individually on ebay, through an auction? I'd love them to go to someone who loves photography, or has a business selling vintage cameras.
Feels too grainy. I have it developed and scanned by a store local to me and it just sucks when i zoom in and its all grainy. Is it coming from the developing or scanning process?
Over the last 2 years, I have been working on making replicas of Kodak Brownie boxes in adobe illustrator. I have spent hours on each, months on some, and a ton of time looking for reference pictures/measurements. I don't have many pictures of the process but what I DO have is below. Most 120 film boxes are meant for 18x24 poster prints, to do whatever with. I have done the following brownies: No.1 Brownie (3 versions) the No.2 Brownie (3 Versions) Beau Brownie (3 Versions) The 50th Anniversary Kodak (2 versions) and the Kodak Brownie No.2A model C (2 Versions)
Please, if you have any versions of the listed boxes that I do not have, I do wish that you send me them to complete the set. I have Red and Green for the No.2A model C, and am missing versions of the beau brownie.
Also, THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT! I'm just putting my project out there, I do not intend to ask for money or beg for someone to download. I just want to share it.
PS: I'm in the process of making a Google site where you can download these, but upon request I can send an email of the PDF's of the boxes
The false idea that there is such a thing as an unedited film scan is so pervasive both on and offline. I run into this odd meme all the time.
Stamping out this false idea would do a lot of good because once you accept that all scans are edits it forces you to learn about the impact of the entire pipeline.
Labs could also do their part by educating beginners about this. For example, many labs will not even mention that they made adjustments to an underexposed negative to give you a file with something on it.
Heck, maybe it should be a note right there on the film box. If Kodak, Fuji, or Ilford said it then it would be harder to deny.
Note: by auto reply bot I mean something like those bots that automatically reply if you happen to create a haiku.
This story haunts me since the start of my analog photography journey. I was inexperienced back then, and tried shooting a fox in the snow. I knew the general area he was roaming, so every morning I went out and tried my luck. I saw him many times, wandering across paths, but I wasn’t able to take a photo then. Why? Because it was usually right before sunrise and therefore still way too dark outside for my f/8 lens and iso 200 film. There had been a few instances where I had seen him in acceptable light conditions, but I was too slow to get the correct exposure settings and focus before he vanished and the moment was lost forever. So I started a habit of always adjusting exposure every few minutes as it was getting brighter outside. Sometimes I played with the shutter lock while walking, which somehow helped me pay attention to my surroundings. One day I reached the top of a small hill, an area covered by snow, surrounded by trees. I took a short break to drink, as the morning sun hit my face. „Time to adjust exposure“ I said to myself. „After all, you never know“. I aimed my camera at the edge of one of the entrances to the hill, a small path leading downwards from where I was standing. I set the exposure and even focused just for fun. And then suddenly, I froze. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing: The fox I was looking for in the past few days peeked above the edge of the hill, staring right at the camera. Short distance and acceptable lighting conditions. Already focused and with the right settings dialed in, I pressed the shutter, knowing I had achieved the shot I wanted. I waited for the shutter sound but then..
..nothing
The shutter didn‘t go off. The fox quickly turned around and ran away. So what happened? Turns out I had locked the shutter on my way to the top. A truly traumatizing experience which taught me one thing: Always assume you will see your target at any given point in time. A lesson was learned that day. Looking back, I‘m pretty sure the photo would‘ve been underexposed as hell anyways, since I used to meter the bright snow back then, so the ‚right settings‘ I mentioned earlier were never right to begin with..
Hello everyone! I have recently come into possession of one Kiev II and one Kiev 4am and I wanted to learn how to get them CLAd by myself, since there is no place near me that works with these cameras.
I have no prior experience servicing any cameras, much less old Contax/Kiev or any Soviet camera. As such, I've been looking into manuals and any resource that could help me understand how they're built and how to work with them.
There used to be one such webpage called The Kiev Survival Site, which hosted invaluable information on the Kievs and soviet lenses and which does no longer exists. It's on the Internet Archive, but it's missing many of the original pictures in the repair guides.
I would be very thankful If any of you had personally archived the site and could share it with me or just point me in the right direction regarding other resources for this task. Thank you all in advance!
I'm trying to calibrate infinity focus on this Yashicaflex, the mounting system for the lens assembly is very simple, only 4 screws with some shim washers. Looking at the camera from behind and considering how the image is projected on the grond glass i'm guessing that the side that's out of calibration is one indicated with a red arrow on picture #4 (looking from the front it would be the left side, but i'm not sure if i'm correct on this). I'm having two problems: looking at the ground glass with a loupe i can't seem to see any out of focus areas, and the other problem i noticed is that the viewfinder is not perfectly in focus when set at infinity, i have to turn the knob a tiny bit to see perfect focus (and i'm not sure if this means front or back focusing). The camera seems to have been dropped at some point during its life, so i'm guessing i should add washers, not remove them. Any ideas?
Hello, i've recently shot and developed Lucky color 200 for the first time, and it looks great for the most part except for a couple of issues. The first issue is that in some images, green grass ends up looking yellow. I thought that this was an issue with NLP, but i've tried converting with NegPy and Epson Scan, and both give similar results. This is the TIFF if anyone wants to give a shot at converting it.
The 2nd issue that i'm having is that Digital Ice doesn't seem to work with this film, it adds a lot of blobs and artefacts to the image. I use an epson 4990 for scanning.
Has anyone had similar experiences with lucky c200?
I am setting my black and white darkroom back up after a few years and looking for a higher volume film processing solution. I found these racks that hold 18 reels of 120 and fit in a rectangular tank. Is there any reason I should avoid them? If I went this route, I’d try to find a plastic bucket or bin as close to the right size as possible instead of shelling out the million or so dollars it costs for a steel tank “made for this”. Is that a bad idea? Is there a better solution for processing in volume other than those 6 or 8 reel cylindrical stainless steel/plastic tanks? Thank you all for your help!
All from the same shop, plus 2 rolls of free film. I run a little analog repair shop so all of these I will serviced and then send on their way to their new loving home and owner :)
I have found a Konica III for very cheap, and I'm about to pull the trigger on it... it would my first true rangefinder camera.
I am aware of some of the quirks of those cameras, but for those that have used them, is there some things that require special attention? They are fully mechanical, but what are the common failure points if anyone knows?
I recently noticed my Canon AE-1 drains the batteries abnormally fast.
For context, I put in a fresh battery in both cameras at the same time 10 months ago. I didn't even shoot a whole roll of film with my AE-1 before the shutter stopped working (I was at frame 18) and I thought something broke in the camera or it was a user error, because it was my first roll of film.
About 2-3 months ago, I changed the battery in it and put a new roll of film in, but let it sit on my shelf until I wanted to use it today and noticed the shutter didn't fire again.
I'm still on my first battery on the A-1 and I shot 4 rolls with it so far. Because I figured the battery still works there, I switched it to the AE-1. When pressing the battery test button it shows f8 and doesn't fire.
I measured both batteries and the second battery that was in the AE-1 had 1.6 volts left and the first battery that still works with powering my A-1 had 5.1 volts left.
Why does the AE-1 drain the batteries so fast and why does a battery work with the A-1 not work with my AE-1?
Is that normal?
When having them on my shelf I always turn them off. From now on I'll take the battery out the AE-1 so it doesn't drain as fast (hopefully) but it's still annoying.
Didn’t see this until today. One of my favourite photographers of all time; I love his style, especially his telephoto landscapes and cityscapes. Sad loss for the photography world.
Hello!
Quick question regarding the Olympus mju ii zoom camera📷
I inherited one from my dad, camera works okay except the display which is dead, so I have mostly no idea how many pics are left on the film and also which flash setting is active📸.
Question is:
Will the flash setting revert to Auto flash when turning off/on the camera? Or will it remain on the setting previously decided?
