Strange low contrast in middle of negative Fuji gsw690ii

Have you looked through the back of the camera to see if the leaf shutter is actually closed? I had a lens on the RB that wouldn't close completely... It acted like a pinhole camera.

Andrew O'Neill said:

Have you looked through the back of the camera to see if the leaf shutter is actually closed? I had a lens on the RB that wouldn't close completely... It acted like a pinhole camera.

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Okie doke I have a film in it currently so will look when I’ve finished the roll

A partially open central leaf shutter would illuminate the entire frame, just like a diaphragm.

My guess would be a really faint light leak. Try leaving the camera out in bright light after firing the shutter with a lens cap.

Filmandfile said:

Yes with both make eye and loupe on two different light boxes. Photo attached of marked spot

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OK that's what I saw as well although in the one with the now attached red circle the issue looks fainter that in same scan you showed without any circle but I don't know why except that the second scan of the original meg may be slightly different

pentaxuser

The designation "GSW" identifies the model with an extra-wide 65mm lens. Some illumination falloff is inherent to this lens out toward the corners and far edges, with the center appearing a little brighter. This effect is more apparent in a high contrast scene like you provide than a lower contrast one. You also have a somewhat higher contrast film involved (Ektar). Nothing wrong - just get used to it, and be aware when it might pose a problem versus a creative opportunity.

Light leaks look nothing like that.

Experiment shooting with different f-sops (at corrected speeds) an evenly illuminated neutral target, like a large sheet of gray matboard. I suspect you'll find that the very widest f-stops exhibit more falloff than smaller stops. But I don't own this actual lens; my own cameras are
GW690's (ii and iii) with the 90 mm lens, which has very little falloff.

DREW WILEY said:

The designation "GSW" identifies the model with an extra-wide 65mm lens. Some illumination falloff is inherent to this lens out toward the corners and far edges, with the center appearing a little brighter. This effect is more apparent in a high contrast scene like you provide than a lower contrast one. You also have a somewhat higher contrast film involved (Ektar). Nothing wrong - just get used to it, and be aware when it might pose a problem versus a creative opportunity.

Light leaks look nothing like that.

Experiment shooting with different f-sops (at corrected speeds) an evenly illuminated neutral target, like a large sheet of gray matboard. I suspect you'll find that the widest f-stops exhibit more falloff than smaller stops. But I don't own this actual lens; my own cameras are
GW690's (ii and iii) with the 90 mm lens, which has very little falloff.

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The OP's issue does appear to produce a faint purplish mark where he indicated by means of his red circle How is this explained by your answer?

Thanks

pentaxuser

I can't tell much from that web image. I'm very familiar with the film involved. But properly shading a wide angle lens is tricky, and it's entirely possible that a certain amount of flare was involved. If there was condensation or lens haze involved, then much or all of the image would be fuzzy, which is not the case.

Why would portions trend purple? (looks pinkish purple on my screen) - it's exactly what I'd expect when the usable range of Ektar starts getting bounds. But maybe that was truly there in the scene, and simply exaggerated a bit by the nature of lens falloff in relation to the native film curve.

Otherwise, I'm reluctant to repeat for the upteenth time why Ektar needs corrective color temp filtration at the time of the shot. The cyan shift in the sky is quite evident. Use the search engine to look it up, or under my own posts in relation to Ektar.

DREW WILEY said:

Why would portions trend purple?

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It doesn't. But the color balance of the entire image is so out of whack that it's virtually impossible to see. However, if you look closely, it trends white. This is consistent with a light leak along the lines suggested by me earlier and also @Andrew O'Neill based on his hands-on experience with a conceptually similar leaf shutter.

It's evidently not a faithful capture of reality (do you have vague white blobs in your landscape all the time? time to call Ghost Busters!), it has nothing to do with Ektar's crossover behavior at overexposure (just notice it also happens on the grass area that is not overexposed) and it certainly has nothing to do with normal wide angle lens falloff.

"Ghosts" could just be scanning artifacts. The whole color balance is out of whack toward the cyan, which could indeed be characteristic of unfiltered Ektar, or again, maybe just another post-shot symptom. Falloff is inevitable, and visible in the corner of the sky. Light leak? Very unlikely given the high reputation of the camera lens and shutter involved, and my own substantial experience with these models (and not just "conceptually similar" leaf shutters). And if that had happened, I'd expect much more dramatic evidence of it.

Another web "Whodunnit" crime mystery. Hard to say, when the evidence is so second or third hand, passing through various questionable hoops to get here. It's not like viewing the original neg directly on a lightbox using a loupe.

He should take my advice and shoot a blank gray background, and see what happens.
I would do it with black and white film, and somewhat overdevelop that for more contrast to enhance any hypothetical issue that might be there.

Somewhere I have the official repair manual to this line of cameras. That might have some answers if a mechanical issue does indeed exist. It's very hard to get these commercially repaired anymore. I've done some work of my own on an older one of them. There's nothing "typical" about the leaf shutter actuating mechanism - it's said to be unique to Fuji. One would have to take the camera apart to see if there's anything worn out or missing on the cog mechanism. The shutter blades themselves are directly accessible with with the camera back open if something as simple as blade lubrication is needed; but doing it unnecessarily or wrongly could introduce a nightmare.

koraks said:

It doesn't. But the color balance of the entire image is so out of whack that it's virtually impossible to see.

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Looking for some education here: What is it about the colour balance that is so out of whack in the first scan on the OP's #1 or are you referring to the scan with the red circle in his #23 which doesn't look quite the same to me?

Is the colour balance in his #13 OK?

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

Looking for some education here: What is it about the colour balance that is so out of whack in the first scan on the OP's #1 or are you referring to the scan with the red circle in his #23 which doesn't look quite the same to me?

Is the colour balance in his #13 OK?

Thanks

pentaxuser

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As seen in post 1:

After a bit of editing which adjusted the overall cyan cast, and reveals more of the flare:

Whatever you do though, you are going to struggle with crossover - fix the cast in the sky, end up with more cast in the foreground.

On the original question though - yes, I see lots of flare, and the image chosen will make dealing with it a challenge.

pentaxuser said:

Is the colour balance in his #13 OK?

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#13 is much better, just a little low in contrast. If you don't see the problem in #1, I wouldn't bother and just live long & be happy. To me it's kind of like asking "what's wrong with that guy" while pointing to someone with one leg and one profusely bleeding stump.

IF that is what the original neg shows, and is not just some incorrect scan or other digi web accident, then the atrocious mismatch I see, at least on my screen, between a hyper-cyan sky and purplish foreground, could indeed be due to incorrect color temp balance at the time of the shot, combined with crossover - something difficult to post-correct, but fairly easy to do at the time of the shot itself if one has the right corrective filter along.

I know, I know ... I get push back all the time. The difference is, I actually know how to correct it, and my RA4 prints consistently prove it. Futz around all you want in post-scan whatever. It's far easier to do at the time of the shot, and sometimes the only way to efficiently do it.

Drew, you're distracting from the question asked and the topic at hand.

Filmandfile said:

Okie doke I have a film in it currently so will look when I’ve finished the roll

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If you haven't finished the film yet, take a photo with the sun at your back and see if the spot is still in that frame. That should eliminate the possibility of lens flare.

koraks said:

#13 is much better, just a little low in contrast. If you don't see the problem in #1, I wouldn't bother and just live long & be happy. To me it's kind of like asking "what's wrong with that guy" while pointing to someone with one leg and one profusely bleeding stump.

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Thanks Yes I do see a difference in #13 as you have pointed out although my failure to see a cyan cast as clearly as I might be able to recognise a one legged man and with one profusely bleeding stump is, I suggest, not quite that bad an error of sight . I asked because it now prompts me to ask why he managed to get the colour balance right in that frame but not the first frame

I assume and that is all it is, is that he hasn't made prints of any of the negs. So it's scans of negs only What this has also prompted is the question of whether the OP developed the film at home or had a lab do it but in either case I wonder what he or the lab did when developing the film that resulted in one scan beíng OK but not the other

Of course there may be problems, at least in some of our judgements, that other negs have but we don't know as we haven't the advantage of seeing all the negs nor of even seeing the two negs in question as negs on a lightbox shot with a digital camera.

Maybe we still don't know enough to be sure what the exact cause of the problem is.

pentaxuser

I'm not distracting whatsoever from the original topic. There you go again, Koraks, down your own lane. These things get intertwined in terms of overall technique or lack thereof,
including any effect of FLARE GHOSTING in relation to the split color rendering itself - a combined set of potentially related clues. But I can only surmise so much, due to the unknown specifics of how these negs have arrived at their present hard to decipher fashion over the web.

Uneven development itself might be in play, but would be less probable if a trustworthy commercial C41 service had been used.

You guys are something else, LOL. Good luck with it.

In this case as in many others, I am reminded of the story (parable, whatever) of "the blind men and the elephant"...

Perhaps all of the above; and even the memory of an elephant can't keep track of them all. But yeah, we are all flying blind in this case. It's the guy in the rope position who's really in trouble if the elephant needs to relive itself.

After doing a slight adjustment the 'flare' looks like an unfortunate patch of muddy ground to me where the texture of the mud lowers the apparent contrast.

250swb said:

an unfortunate patch of muddy ground

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Yeah, that must be it. A patch of muddy ground that travels along with the camera and consistently positions itself in the center of the frame. The earth tilts a little depending on camera angle, too, to accommodate it. And the mud has a habit of emitting diffuse white light as well, just...well, because.




I think we should acknowledge OP's problem. It exists. And it's unrelated to Ektar crossover, mysteriously migrating mud pools and other hypotheses that go counter to the evidence presented.

A bright muddy sky is in my experience about the worst to expose the flaw of internal reflections inside a lense and the result looks more or less like above. I had the same thing with a Tamron 2.5/90 mm. Reason was a reflection from the last element form damaged coating. A summicron 35 v4 did the same when it had some smear on the last element (not to self not to throw chocolate-wrapping into your bag). Have a second look for haziness when shining a light into the lens from the rear with a dark background but with the light outside of your view. Then take the light shine and look into the camera from the rear: Anything reflective you can find?

koraks said:

Yeah, that must be it. A patch of muddy ground that travels along with the camera and consistently positions itself in the center of the frame. The earth tilts a little depending on camera angle, too, to accommodate it. And the mud has a habit of emitting diffuse white light as well, just...well, because.

View attachment 413517
View attachment 413518

I think we should acknowledge OP's problem. It exists. And it's unrelated to Ektar crossover, mysteriously migrating mud pools and other hypotheses that go counter to the evidence presented.

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If it travels around with the camera why is it only on a couple of shots (according to the OP), are you suggesting its gone off to do other things in the meantime? I did nothing to my version of the image other than alter the colour balance of the hazy patch and apply an Auto Contrast, not brightening it or darkening it, as opposed to taking a low resolution image and stretching it and distorting the brightness and colours until it screams. Am I supposed to believe by distorting it so far you actually learn something from it? If it is flare in the centre of the image are the trees in the background flare proof?

Light leaks are often intermittent since they depend in e.g. how the camera is held between exposures and how much time the film spends in the affected location in the camera.
The emphasized contrast just highlights the problem for those who don't see or believe this defect for some implausible reason.