Thanks again for chiming in Richard. I feel like you could be on to something; perhaps the curvature of the film strip is interacting with the film holder somehow creating a shadow during “scanning.” This is conceivable to me. I have noticed it on my 6x6 “scans” as well, albeit to a much lesser degree.
I’ll try a few things and report back. Thanks again for your input.
Hey sorry for the slow reply - a variety of cameras. These ones were taken on Nikon FE2 or Nikon FM2/T mainly.
I don’t think the end of the strip shots is the issue, at least I am always careful to put something dark against them to ensure no artifacting of light glowing in. I think you may be right though about the curvature of the film, or somehow some light reflection of the holder?
No worries, I appreciate the reply nonetheless. In a way I’m glad to hear your shooting with those cameras. My images were taken with a Leica M5 and part of me worried the artifacts were due to the shutter.
FYI, just got some lab scans back and it doesn’t look like they show the edge issues. Will scan the negs myself once i get them back to see if I can repro it.
Thank buddy, yeah my thinking is that it is definitely related to the skier copybox. I wonder if we use a different masking system on the negatives and then try it if it is still there? My thought is that light is maybe reflecting of the metal on the negative carrier and back onto the negative? If not then it’s likely the light, which seems odd…
Reflections (i.e., extra light) would show up as dark portions once the negative is inverted. We’re dealing with shadows/shade (i.e., lack of light) here, which after inversion shows up as brighter areas. But yeah, I feel like it could be something related to the film carrier for sure.
Any luck ever solving this?
Actually, yeah, but it involved buying a new lens. After getting a native macro for my Fuji (the Laowa 65/2.8) my results improved substantially. I think the F-to-X-mount adapter, and then the extension ring for the Micro-Nikkor to get 1:1, was really affecting the quality of my captures. The Laowa was quite affordable. Worth looking into. Cheers!
Hey all, I’ve had similar issues with the flat-field conversions. It seems specific to the Lightroom conversion (I’ve tried all the above suggestions from Nate) but this article describes a way to do it in Photoshop which has yielded me great results: Vignetting 4: Photoshop Divide Layer | Paul Duncan
@Nate following this method, flattening and saving out the images converts to TIFFs. Like I said my results look great, but I’m wondering if there is any theoretical disadvantage (in this case) to the TIFFs, as my images were originally DSLR scanned (.ARWs)?