White spot on film transfer

[J. Winfield Heckert]

I have a white spot running through my whole film transfer. I'm puzzled since I thought a hair or dirt would turn up black,

I did check the gate several times and could see no obstructions.

 

here is a screen shot of it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/heckert/28627373142/in/dateposted-public/

[David Mullen ASC]

Dirt & dust on a negative shows up as white when viewed as a positive, but that odd shape on the right edge doesn't look like dirt or dust.

[Nick Morr]

It looks curiously like an exposure needle from a light meter. But it wouldn't have been photographed. Is it on the negative? Or could it have been in the transfer? At any rate, sorry about your mark ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

[Robert Houllahan]

Objects that are white usually in the scanner gate on negative.

 

I think maybe something got trapped in the gate of our scanner on this roll. I am not sure where or how this got into the gate as it is basically a open box with the LED lamp underneath and the aperture for the gate being about 3 16mm frames high and open edge to edge.

 

I sent an email we need to rescan that roll.

[Mark Dunn]

I have a white spot running through my whole film transfer. I'm puzzled since I thought a hair or dirt would turn up black,

I did check the gate several times and could see no obstructions.

 

here is a screen shot of it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/heckert/28627373142/in/dateposted-public/

It would be better to ask the lab first, although Robert has very decently taken it on the chin.

[Perry Paolantonio]

That has happened to us as well, when some film arrived from a third party that had been hand cleaned using wipes that shed fibers. A clump of fiber got snagged in a broken perf and then it fell off the film and got stuck in the gate. When in the gate it was much more in focus, but it quickly fell out of the gate and down onto the LED surface below, where it showed up in the frame looking burry like this.

[Bruce Greene]

It looks like light struck the negative. Examine the negative by hand, this may give you a clue about any light leak in the camera. I'm thinking that a light leak in the scanner would show as dark, not light.

 

I once had a problem with a light leak in my Arri BL1 camera. To find it I placed a capped lens on the camera, took off the magazine, placed a black cloth over my head, and had an assistant hit the camera with a 1000W light, moving the light around the camera.

 

I discovered that light was leaking into the screw hole for the hand held handle, when it was not on the camera, and getting into the gate. There was also some light leak on the opposite side, coming through the tachometer. These problems were fixed on the BL2 forward...

 

Making sure the handle was mounted at all times, and covering the tachometer with tape fixed the problem :)

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

Gotta love that BL-1 tach!

[Robert Houllahan]

This is not a light leak in the camera, that would show as dark not white.

 

Please don't check the negative by hand as that will just make it dirty.

 

I found one other scan I did where this piece of debris showed up very briefly on the scan, I have already re-scanned that roll before it shipped.

 

I cleaned the LED Lamp, the 16mm gate and the Lens-Sensor travel system, and we are scanning several S16mm 2K jobs right now without any trouble, this debris might have come from an archival 16mm B&W from the 20's. I cleaned the system after that old film but something must have flaked off, so I re cleaned the scanner again.

 

I am sorry that debris got in the scan and I missed it

[David Mullen ASC]

A light leak would show up dark on the negative, but light when you electronically reversed it into a positive image.

[J. Winfield Heckert]

Thanks for your great work so far Rob. The processing and scanning looks great! I'm so glad its not an camera issue!