What does a bellows pinhole....

[John Bartley]

.... light leak look like on the negative or the print?

On my recent holidays, I took four pictures. Two were taken while either standing in shade or with the sun at my back. Two others were taken with the sun in almost identical positions - from the right at about 30 degrees elevation and maybe 15 degrees behind. The two taken with sun at the side have almost identical single stripes starting at the top left corner. All my other negatives are fine (well ... as fine as "my" negatives get ).

Here's the whole frame :

http://www3.sympatico.ca/oldrad/Photo/LargeFormat/NegScans/MWT01.jpg

and here's the line :

http://www3.sympatico.ca/oldrad/Photo/LargeFormat/NegScans/MWT02.jpg

My problem is that I would have thought that a light leak would show a white or lighter grey line than the surrounding areas. These lines almost make me think that I had a lack of light ???

One last thing ... the two photos were taken with two different lenses.

Has anyone got any ideas?

cheers

 

[Lee L]

Looks like a hair or string in front of the film plane inside the camera, a bit closer to the film where it curves most. What strikes me as odd is that it curves up from the bottom of the camera.

Check in the bellows on the bottom of the camera near the film back for loose threads or the like.

Lee

 

[Charles Webb]

The black horizontal lines are scratches on the emulsion side of the film.
How they got there could be several things during the handeling, loading and unloading of the film. I would check the film holder and front edge of the dark slide for roughness. Then go through each step of loading and unloading looking for anything that could cause horizontal scratches. Simply inserting the sheet into the holder and dragging the emulsion on the front edge of the D slide would/could create full length scratches similar to those on the print.
The white looking sort of a triangle is lint, dust, hair or a thread hanging in front or sticking up from the bottom in front of the film plane . Charlie........

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

Pictures taken with my 5x7 Deardorff - when the bellows was full of pinholes - showed multiple images on the film formed by the pinholes, superimposed on the image formed by the glass lens during a multi-second exposure. It was an interesting effect, but I replaced the bellows anyway.

 

[Lee L]

Dust, string, hair, etc in front of the film in the camera at the time of exposure leaves a dark line or mark, its "shadow" on the film during exposure where development can build no density.

Dust, string, hair, etc in the light path in the enlarger leaves a white line where it blocks transmitted enlarger light from hitting the paper, like the white triangular line near the top in the full frame print.

Scratches in the emulsion are normally sharper and straighter than the curved black line. The dark curved line in your print looks like the out of focus shadow of something inside the camera when the film was exposed.

I once had a very angry customer come back from an overseas vacation where he used his brand new Canon AE-1 for the very first time. Every frame he shot had a thin black vertical line, a tiny bit wider near the edge of the frame. I told him what I thought it was, a hair across the shutter, but I was wrong. There was a very thin thread of enamel paint, the interior finish on the camera, across the lens side of the shutter gate. A simple manufacturing flaw that I fixed in five seconds. He didn't run a test roll before his vacation, and didn't process anything until he got back.

You have the same kind of thing going on, but further in front of the film.

Lee

 

[John Bartley]

Thank you ALL very much for the responses. I have a feeling that Lee might be headed in the right direction. These curved dark lines happened only on the first negatives after changing lenses. I think I'll look for something floating in the bellows chamber,

Charles : I never noticed the horizontal lines until you mentioned them, but I do know what they are. Those are scanner artifacts - comes from being a cheapskate in the digital department. I use a scanner that I paid exactly $1.00 for. It ain't great, but it does do 8x10 B&W negatives and works well enough to do previewing before printing.

cheers and thanks again all.