After ~15 years scanning with an Epson V850, I decided to move to DSLR scanning for speed and quality. I recently invested in the full Negative Supply setup:
ProFilm Carrier MK2 35mm & 120
4×5 Light Source MK2 (92 CRI)
Film Scanning Hoods for both 35mm and 120
Shooting with a Nikon D780 body + Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro (also have a Nikon 60mm macro to test)
The issue
I consistently see orange/yellow glow at the edges of frames, almost like light leaks or faded corners.
At f/22, the artifacts mostly disappear.
At more practical apertures (f/5.6–f/11), the edge glow is very noticeable.
Mostly in darker parts of frames, I’ll get this orange/yellow bleed.
I’ve ruled out external light, lights off, blinds closed, only the light box on. Even my computer screen is backed away.
What I’ve tried
Different apertures and ISO values.
Flat Field Correction in Lightroom → helps but doesn’t eliminate.
Using the Negative Supply hoods and MK2 film carrier, which I thought should mask the light source. Am I misunderstanding how much light they’re supposed to block?
Planning to test the Nikon 60mm macro and compare against Epson V850 scans.
Research so far
Others report similar issues. The two most common solutions seem to be:
Switching to another macro lens to reduce vignetting.
Making flat-field correction part of the workflow.
Has anyone else run into this specifically with the Negative Supply 4×5 MK2 light source?
Is this just lens vignetting that requires flat-field correction?
Or should I be considering another macro lens?
And on the masking point: isn’t that what the MK2 holder + hood are already designed to do, or do I need to add further masking?
Any help would be hugely appreciated. I’d much rather scan at f/8, ISO 100–200 for sharp results, not be stuck at f/22 with diffraction just to avoid these edge artifacts.
Hello @lideborg and welcome to the forum. It’s a frustrating issue and doesn’t always have the same solution or indeed cause. I’m not saying that this is associated with your problem but I would tend to use the centre of any LED panel rather than the edge as you seem to be doing, many panels are not that even near the edges. Then cut a mask to block off the light with an aperture only just large enough not to interfere with the image recorded on your sensor with that lens, the aim being to eliminate stray ‘non image forming’ light from the enquiries.
You might also photograph the panel on its own so that you capture its entire illuminated area and expose to give a mid-tone, then examine in your software by increasing the contrast severely, it will most likely look horrible but it will give you an idea about the evenness across the area. Also maybe with your camera setup for copying you could photograph a blank frame on unexposed film from the end of the roll if you have one, again expose to give a mid-tone.
Rather baffled as to why it mostly goes away at f22 but if it is caused by lens vignetting maybe that goes away at f22 too. It does rather look like lens vignetting from your Tamron to me. This effect is always worse with thin negatives.
Yeah, this is actually a pretty common issue with some of the Negative Supply light sources. Seems to be hit-or-miss depending on the unit. I’ve run across posts here and elsewhere where people had the same kind of uneven backlight you’re seeing.
I couldn’t tell you exactly which models are most affected (I never kept close track), but a quick search pulls up plenty of examples. The usual fix seems to be either swapping for a better sample with more even lighting, or in some cases switching to another brand.
By looking at your photos, both aperture and light source might be the cause, I do lean more towards aperture issue. One way to test them is to flip the light source and see if the edge glow follows? for example, don’t move the film carrier but switch the orientation of the light source, put the film carrier back on the light source. Does the edge glow show on the other side? If yes, then the light source is the problem, if not, then the lens is.
I have a friend using similar setup but I don’t recall seeing this dark corner on his photos.
Also, mentioned by @SSelvidge , the uniformity of brightness on Negative Supply basic light sources (either CRI 97 or 99) is really bad. I opened one of these and it turns out only two LED strips are inside the panel (usually there should be 4, one on each side). The LED they used is Waveform Absolute series which is indeed good, however only putting two in there is not acceptable. The cost of the light strip, based on my calculation, is only 15 USD, with the case and everything it would only worth 20 USD. I strongly recommend returning the light source if possible. Tried swapping a few with B&H but still no luck.
EDIT: If it’s aperture related, usually the four corner will look the same. OP’s image doesn’t look exact same on each corner so I do also suspect the light source being an issue. I used to have similar looking pictures when I use NS 4x5 light source, swapped and never seen again.
Let me offer my take though the folks who are already responded are widely considered top SME in the field so their opinions is something to take very seriously. What gives me the pause is that going to f/22 fixes the issue - for me that clearly points to lens light fall off. What you can do is take capture of empty film gate with exposure set to give you middle grey in the center. Review the shot with color picker in your favorite application - you should see high lightness in specific spots changes depending on coordinates. If you can place camera in spot measuring mode you should be able to move the spot across frame using camera controls and see how badly exposure deviates from center. In live view mode you should get the real feel of that. try doing this at different apertures and lenses. Try to do something similar to what I described here [ film4ever.info - 35 mm Alignment Strip ] but for a moment those strips are not available on Amazon
