''HELP''...with streak in film

[jgredline]

Hi Folks.
As I picked up my last roll of film from CVS, I noticed this ugly line 3/4 of the way down. My question is this. Could this be the film? or the camera? or CVS?
The previous roll, came out good. no line.
If it matters, this is the Kodak Hi def pro film. Any Ideas?

[California L33]

Yes, yes, and yes.

Is the film scratched? If so it could be any of the three.

There is a more esoteric cause of this type of line if there are no scratches. It happens when a film processor runs their equipment at high speed in dry air. A static spark forms right as the unprocessed film comes off the roll and 'stays' there as the film unwinds. You end up with a tiny little 'light struck' line. That happened to a filmmaker friend of mine. He exposed 1200 feet of 16mm film and ended up with a line down every inch of it.

Kodak used to analyze film problems for free, but it may have only been for 'Kodak Professional' products.

Processors are supposed to know that this is a potential problem, check the humidity, and turn down the speed if it's too dry.

[photophorous]

Is it on the negatives? Is it on every frame? It's probably a scratch and that could be caused by multiple things, like a sloppy tech at CVS (that's my guess), something stuck in the film canister felt (usually only happens to people who bulk load), or something stuck inside your camera (could have fallen out already). I would make sure the back of your camera is nice and clean. Feel around the area that contacts the film for something sharp. Other than that, my only suggestion is to try a different lab. I've had negatives come back like this and was never able to figure out exactly what caused it because it never happened again.

Paul

[jgredline]

L33,
Paul, Thanks for the advice. I found the culprit. ''CVS''...I just scanned one of the negatives and problem solved. Who ever scanned my negatives on to the CD Rom simply messed up or did not bother to check or simply did not care. I am glad it is not my camera. I will be doing my own processing from now on. I keep threatening to do it, but it is time....

[photophorous]

If you scanned using digital ICE, there could still be a scratch on the negatives. If you haven't already, you should look at the negatives with a loupe to make sure.

Are you going to start doing your own C-41? I don't know anything about that, but I'd be curious to hear how it goes.

Paul

[California L33]

L33,
Paul, Thanks for the advice. I found the culprit. ''CVS''...I just scanned one of the negatives and problem solved. Who ever scanned my negatives on to the CD Rom simply messed up or did not bother to check or simply did not care. I am glad it is not my camera.

Wait, I'm kind of with photophorous here. It looks like there's damage to the negative that a scanner's software removed digitally on a re-scan. There could still be a problem with your camera, though it's far more likely to have been a problem at CVS. The only reason I'm pointing this out is that if you do have a little bit of crud in the camera and don't examine your negs for scratches which are being automatically removed by the scanner, it makes the possibility of old school enlarger prints just about impossible. I don't know if that's important to you, but it is to some. At that point you have to figure out if you've got a base scratch or an emulsion scratch. If it's a base scratch you can usually still make a print, albeit with more difficulty. If it's an emulsion scratch you're usually sunk.

If you do examine your negatives and find scratches, check the very end of the roll, where no pictures are printed- after frame 36 or 24. That part won't have gone through your camera's movement, but will have gone through the processing equipment. So if the scratch goes end to end (where it was never touched by your pressure plate) it's CVS's problem. If it stops at the end it may be yours.

C-41 processing is no picnic. As well as having to control all the chemicals, as I understand it, C-41 is also quite temperature sensitive. If you're off a couple of degrees you change the gamma curve of the negatives. You might be better off establishing a relationship with a good professional lab.

Edit: And if you don't mind me saying, the CVS scan looks better to me (if you don't count the scratch which you could take out with Photoshop). The curtains aren't washed out, yet the shadows fall off in the same places.

[jgredline]

Edit: And if you don't mind me saying, the CVS scan looks better to me (if you don't count the scratch which you could take out with Photoshop). The curtains aren't washed out, yet the shadows fall off in the same places.

No worries, that was a very quick scan trying to diagnose the problem.
Here is a scan at 1200dpi resized using my HP Scanner with Vue Scan software.
I have it set so it does not add any sort of PP.

[California L33]

I'm glad there's nothing wrong with your camera or negatives. Unless CVS's scanner has a problem with its sensor then I'm stymied.