What made this line?

[paulfish4570]

Please look at the black line in this pic:

The line started appearing about half through scanning a roll this morning. I checked those negs and could not see a line with my close-up glasses looking through a magnifying glass.

There is NO line in the clear spaces between the negatives. I pulled the negative for this image from a batch that had scanned previously without a line.

What do you make of it? Nothing is on the scanner bed or on the light shield. And why would it stop short of the washed-out sky?

 

[monemmer]

I've had this sort of thing happen before with an Epson 4490 flatbed scanner. In color scans it was even more pronounced (wrong colors along the line). This is an indication that the pixel in the sensor that reads that particular line is dead or malfunctioning. In the case of my scanner, it was still useful for 35mm film, since the 35mm film holder had a slot that did not overlap with the bad line. However for medium format the film would always overlap with the dead pixel line.

I eventually replaced the scanner with another one.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Looks like a dead pixel. I think it is a case of either too much or too little signal excess which causes it to disappear at the bright sky. The same can happen with a scratch in the film if the negative were "bulletproof" there, but you'd most likely still see something on the surface with a loupe.
Good luck.

Phil Forrest

 

[david.elliott]

That has happened to me once with my v500. It was just some dust over the calibration part of the scanner. Cleaned it off and that was that.

 

[paulfish4570]

Where is the calibration part? I am a techno idiot ...

 

[paulfish4570]

I scanned a clean negative shiny side down then shiny side up. The line stayed in one place. It is a dead photoreceptor/pixel thing. A trip to Walmart to return the scanner will be made today ... :x 😢

 

[paulfish4570]

Scanner returned. money returned. What now?

 

[hipsterdufus]

Canon 8800F. I've been really happy with mine.

This is a direct scan of a negative with minimal PP shot on TMax 400 and stand-developed in Rodinal:

 

[Vilk]

hmmm... how could it have been a dead element, if the line isn't parallel to the edge, or even straight, and doesn't span the entire length of the frame?

🙄

 

[paulfish4570]

I don't know about such things. Anyhow, it did not go away when I cleaned the bed and the cover, so I presumed it was something inside that would require actual skills to ascertain. The line segments are perfectly straight even if not parallel to the negs.

 

[Spleenrippa]

I've had some seriously funky lines (Epson 4490) that were caused by some dust on the glass.

 

[AlastairBird]

I've had several lines like that in the red channel of both my Artixscan M1 and my 8000. Supposedly they're caused by dust in the calibration path or on the sensor itself. I usually randomly try to clear them off with a shot of canned air - but I have no idea what I'm actually trying to dust off. They come and go - I try to ignore them or retouch them out when they're particularly bad...

 

[paulfish4570]

Rats, maybe I shouldn't have sent it back. I don't understand how dust could have gotten under the deck anyhow, if that was it. Still scannerless ...