Is this film reticulation? Or scanner artifact?

[alentine]

Is this film reticulation? Or scanner artifact?

Hello every body,
This is the best place I think to ask about reticulations among most people who could affected by this problem.

As far as I recall from the work in the dark room, the effect on the attached film is most probably unintentional reticulations like what we get some times due to many reasons.
Is it reticulations or scanner artifact?, or could it be both or any of the two effects?
Please share what you think.

The attached photo is a small crop from a photo in a review about Plustek OpticFilm 120 scanner newer version in B&H place, could not bring the complete photo due to copyright!.
I'm not related to any party, and indeed belongs to the contralateral part of the globe.
Thank you all.

 

[AERO]

Is this film reticulation? Or scanner artifact?

Hello every body,
This is the best place I think to ask about reticulations among most people who could affected by this problem.
View attachment 385563
As far as I recall from the work in the dark room, the effect on the attached film is most probably unintentional reticulations like what we get some times due to many reasons.
Is it reticulations or scanner artifact?, or could it be both or any of the two effects?
Please share what you think.

The attached photo is a small crop from a photo in a review about Plustek OpticFilm 120 scanner newer version in B&H place, could not bring the complete photo due to copyright!.
I'm not related to any party, and indeed belongs to the contralateral part of the globe.
Thank you all.

I QUOTE:
RETICULATION

Break up of emulsion caused by extreme changes of temperature during processing.
1 The image would look like dry cracked mud.

The formation of a coarse, crackled surface on the emulsion coating of a film during improper processing.
If some process solution is too hot or too alkaline, it may cause excessive swelling of the emulsion
and this swollen gelatin may fail to dry down as a smooth homogeneous layer.

END QUOTE

 

[brbo]

Reticulation in modern colour films is hard to get even if you are trying deliberately.

The samples in B&H user review shows a dusty negative and a known banding problem in some samples of this scanner. The reviewer describes the scanner as the "newly released model", but I'm sceptical. The reworked model is named Plustek 120 Pro and has USB 3.0, yet the Specs page on B&H for Plustek OpticFilm 120 (note the absence of "Pro") lists USB 2.0 connectivity.

Pro model was announced quite some time ago, but never really available for purchase.

 

[loccdor]

Scanners work in a linear fashion so if you see straight lines like in the image it does suggest a scanner problem. Aside from scratching film during transport (which is less uniform than this) most film problems do not look so linear.

 

[JensH]

I have a scanner (Agfa T2500) that is prone to such linear artefacts, if not cleaned regularly.
It is collecting dust inside on mirrors and the light source...

 

[Sirius Glass]

Reticulation in modern color film is so rare it is almost unheard of. Even purposely forcing reticulation rarely works.

 

[Rudeofus]

I have seen reticulation a few times with modern film (shows you haw careless I am), but it didn't look like this. Reticulation looks like extreme granularity, while this snippet of a scan looks like the scan of an underexposed object. Underexposed objects tend to have low contrast, which the scanner software tries to correct.

 

[koraks]

The attached photo is a small crop from a photo in a review about Plustek OpticFilm 120 scanner

You posted this in the B&W section, but the scan appears not to be black & white. Can you give any context, links etc. that may help interpret the little snippet we're looking at? Frankly, I have trouble figuring out the scale of the artefacts that we're looking at, what kind of source material it is etc. Basically, it's abstract art to me, at this point.

Having said that:

Scanners work in a linear fashion so if you see straight lines like in the image it does suggest a scanner problem.

Definitely; and I see perfectly parallel vertical lines on the snippet, and that is definitely a digital artefact and not something you'd expect to see as a defect on actual, physical film.

There's more going on; some kind of mottling, it seems. Boosting the contrast on the example snippet gives this:

which makes me suspect that maybe it's simply a greasy fingerprint we're looking at. That, and some vertical lines/striations that likely result from scanning.
The density variations (the bands that look a bit like aurora) may or may not be artefacts related to uneven development, variations in intensity in the scanner light source, or simply actual real-world differences in exposure.

Overall, there's too little information to go by to tell what's going on here - but one thing is certain: none of this stands out as being related to reticulation. As said above, reticulation is rare to begin with and even if you try to force a film to reticulate, you'll generally fail - especially with modern color film. I think this is mostly because of subbing technique being so effective that it's neigh impossible for the emulsion to detach from the film base, which is a necessary prerequisite for reticulation.

 

[250swb]

For anybody interested here is the page and image being referred to

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...064365642_Optic_Film_120_Scanner.html/reviews

And by clicking on it I see a scan full of dust and dirt and clearly visible lines, so given the premise of 'rubbish in, rubbish out' I think its dirty rollers on the processing machine and/or an unskilled scanner operative.

 

[koraks]

For anybody interested here is the page and image being referred to

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...064365642_Optic_Film_120_Scanner.html/reviews

Thanks; that helps!
So the image is part of a review by one 'Mitchell' who awarded a single star and complains of quality problems with the scanners he received. Here's a larger snippet from the same frame:

This should help anyone trying to find the photo to identify it in the review.
The magenta and green fluctuations on the image suggest a problem with the scanner itself really is part of the problem here. There's also a fingerprint on the negative.

dirty rollers on the processing machine

Doesn't look like this to me. I also don't see how inappropriate operation of the scanner could cause this. It looks like a hardware issue.

 

[alentine]

For anybody interested here is the page and image being referred to

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...064365642_Optic_Film_120_Scanner.html/reviews

And by clicking on it I see a scan full of dust and dirt and clearly visible lines, so given the premise of 'rubbish in, rubbish out' I think its dirty rollers on the processing machine and/or an unskilled scanner operative.

Hello Steve,
Thanks for the clarification.
That re-made the thread.

To all posters here, my apologies for now, will comeback for commenting on the thread.