Avoid Newton rings with glass holder

newtorf

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Just want to share my recent experience to fight off the Newton rings in scanning.

Having been a long time XPAN shooter, I seldom encountered Newton ring issue with my Nikon 9000ED scanner and 869G glass holder in the past. Perhaps it was because I mainly shoot black and white. But I did occasionally shoot color negatives and have stocked about 30 rolls in my freezer. Recently I had them developed in Costco and started to scan them. The nasty Newton rings started to haunt me.

I did some research and it seemed that the best way to get rid of them is to use Anti-Newton Ring glasses. I even found a website called focalpoint selling some replacement ANR glasses for Nikon scanner holders. But just before I hit the buy button, I took a look at my 869G holder and realized that the glasses were glued to the holder. I did not know how to safely remove it from the holder!

So I ended up living with the Newton rings. While more and more XPAN color negative were scanned, my mood sank south further and further. One day, I cleaned the glass and it turned out to be a disaster. Cleaning glass made the situation much worse!

After careful examination of the films inside holder, I realized that the Newton rings were caused by the upper layer glass of the holder when it touched with the upper side of the films. If somehow I could create a little space between the films and the upper layer glass, the problem might go away.

Today I decided to perform an experiment. First, I cut off several strips of electric tapes - about 2mm x 15mm. Then I taped three strips together so each strip was three times thicker. I stick the strips on the upper side of the films at the top edge where there is no image. Vela! This simple change got rid of all Newton rings!

The diagram below hopefully illustrates what I did. The '=======' are the tape strips. The strips do not have to cover the entire top edge. But they have to be at least three layers. I found that two layers do not eliminate the Newton rings entirely.

+---=======---------===+===---------=======---+
|......................................|....................................|
|......................................|....................................|
+-------------------------------+-----------------------------+
 
I don't get your diagram, but my Newton Ring problem was with the V500. If I put a newly developed set of negatives correctly (emulsion up) the negatives bowed down and touched the flat bed glass. By flipping the negatives (emulsion down) and putting the ANG on the bowed up negative no rings. I do have flip horizontally in Post Process but I much happier like you.

If the negatives have been in folders for a year then they are flat and I don't have to do this.
 
Nikon scanner comes with "templates" cut out from a flat, black plastic, that should do the same job as you did with the tape.
However, a much simpler move, would be to buy another 35mm neg carrier, and cut away every other spacer - you can already see, that the first spacer is partially cut out as a suggestion.
 
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