Hello and Help please!?

Smeghead · Oct 1, 2007

Hello, I'm new to this forum and fairly new to photography as well. My name is Peter and I am a filmmaker from Seattle, WA. I just got into photography as a hobby this summer after my uncle gave me an old Minolta XG-1. I'm posting this because I have been experiencing a problem after I get my photos back from being processed. On a number of pictures there seems to be a strange glare down the left side of the picture.

here is an example.(sorry it's so big)
http://ripway.com/members/getfile.asp?file=\55130002%2Ejpg

Can anyone tell me what may cause this? Is it the type of film, where I'm pointing the camera, the camera itself, a filter I'm using?

thanks in advance. :wink:

grammaterri · Oct 1, 2007

I'm a newbie too, but was interested in your photo, however the link you provide takes me to a log in page. Look for a link directly to your photo on the site and use that link.

hope this helps,
Terri

Mike_E · Oct 1, 2007

Hi Smeghead and welcome. You can also use photobucket. Be sure to not go over 800 pixels wide (600 is better

)

Smeghead · Oct 1, 2007

sorry about the mishap...hopefully this fixes it.

http://h1.ripside.net/frankthebunny/55130002.jpg

Smeghead · Oct 3, 2007

Mike_E · Oct 3, 2007

Sorry, I don't know. Looks as though you got a bad roll of film, maybe a bad batch. How old and which type is it?

Iron Flatline · Oct 3, 2007

Might it be a light leak?

usayit · Oct 3, 2007

light leak would also be my guess. Check the seals around the film door.

Flash Harry · Oct 4, 2007

A light leak with film would cause massive overexposure and the processed print would be whiteout, without an image present I cant see any overexposure here, the glare on the water is caused by underexposure as the majority of the scene is dark, you need to compensate for the brightness of the scene by overexposing 1 to 2 stops. H

JIP · Oct 4, 2007

Did this happen with more than 1 roll? do you have other examples?

LaFoto · Oct 4, 2007

Heya Smeghead (or Peter!

) and welcome to ThePhotoForum.
Sorry, I had to download your photo onto my computer to have Photoshop open it at only 25% of its size, else I would never have been able to view it properly.

What I then saw, however, also suggests light leak to me. Which can be minimal, so not all your film needs to be totally ruined from it. Back in the old film days (for me), I even sometimes happened to forget I still had a film in the camera and accidentally opened it, and only the photo of the strip that was out at the front was ALL lost then, and the one before and the one behind got "flames" (red light "smears" moving in from the exposed side to the middle of the photo), but no more. So it would not surprise me too much if an older camera had some leaks, minute ones, but so they could allow for this bit of additional light to enter.

Dagwood56 · Oct 4, 2007

You said it appears on many [not all ] of the photos, so I'm thinking it might be, not sure for the technical term for this, but it happens sometimes when the film is re-wound, especially in older cameras without an automatic film rewind. My Yashica TL Electro sometimes does this. As you turn the handle, the film doesn't rewind at an even rate back into the canister and this dragging, I was told, forms a static charge or something that builds up and causes lines to form on some of the prints.

You'll have to firgive me, my skills are rusty, its been years, but when I had a similar problem with my Yashica in the 70's I was told this is what the problem was caused by. Hope I've been of some help.

Smeghead · Oct 4, 2007

Dagwood56 said:
You said it appears on many [not all ] of the photos, so I'm thinking it might be, not sure for the technical term for this, but it happens sometimes when the film is re-wound, especially in older cameras without an automatic film rewind. My Yashica TL Electro sometimes does this. As you turn the handle, the film doesn't rewind at an even rate back into the canister and this dragging, I was told, forms a static charge or something that builds up and causes lines to form on some of the prints.

You'll have to firgive me, my skills are rusty, its been years, but when I had a similar problem with my Yashica in the 70's I was told this is what the problem was caused by. Hope I've been of some help.

well yes my camera does have a manual rewind on it. If this is in fact the problem do you know of any solution to fixing it and/or avoiding it all together?

Thank you
and thanks to everyone else's responses as well

for the person asking about my film. It is Kodak 200 speed and it was bought last week or the week before, either way its not very old.

Another thought occurred to me. Could this be from using the automatic mode on my camera. In film school we use Super 8mm cameras. When we shoot a scene we set the camera's to auto[exposure], take a light reading with the built in reflective meter, and switch over to manual to set the f-stop properly. Should I be doing this with my 35mm still camera?

thanks once again

Flash Harry · Oct 5, 2007

meter for the darkest part of the scene that you want correctly exposed, like I said before your exposure is under by 1 - 2 stops, I've also downloaded the shot and see nothing that suggests a light leak just that glare on the water which tells me you let the camera meter decide the exposure and you need to compensate for the brightness of the scene by overexposing by a couple of stops. H

Helen B · Oct 5, 2007

This is a local problem - it is not caused by using auto exposure.

Could you tell, or show, us more about how the other frames and the film rebate are affected. Is the problem always in one place in the image?

A rewind problem can show up as streaks along, not across, the film if the shutter curtain hasn't capped properly (ie the two curtains aren't together, so there is a small gap between them) you can get wavy lines all along the film. They continue between frames. The wavy lines are caused by the wobbling of the camera as you rewind - it is like one long wavy horserace photofinish picture. Static usually looks very different - more like spots of light.

Rewinding the film the wrong way (ie emulsion side out) into the cassette causes lines across the film, usually in line with the sprocket holes. These lines are narrower and more pronounced that the band in your picture.

An uneven shutter could cause the problem. That shows up as uneven bands either vertically or horizontally, depending on which way the focal plane shutter runs (applies only to cameras with focal plane shutters). The effect of this would be different at different shutter speeds. Exercising the shutter, or having it cleaned, could solve the problem. Which way does the shutter run? I don't think that this is a sticking shutter, because the shadows are affected more than the highlights.

What condition are the two shutter curtains in? Is one of them no longer perfectly lightproof in one area? (Are the shutter curtains cloth or metal?)

If it was a light leak from the back of the camera, the effect would vary from frame to frame, depending on how long the film was in position (ie if you take a rapid succession of shots the leak will have little effect, but if you wind on and leave the film there for a while it would have a large effect). It would probably be a lot more intense right near the leak.

If the back had been opened inadvertently you could see that sort of banding on the sections of film that were on the take-up sprocket a few laps under the surface. You would probably see more effect near the edge if you looked at the negatives, because of the sprocket holes.

Look at the negatives. The rebate (the part along the sprocket holes) should be perfectly clear. Is it, or is there a slight darkening in line with the problem in the image?

That's enough for now. There are other possibilities such as internal reflections. Tell us about the effect on the other frames, and about the film rebate.

The effect is happening much more in the shadows than in the highlights, which does suggest a leak or other extraneous light, such as flare. I think that your exposure looks good for that lighting situation. Do you get the problem in other backlit shots, or in all shots?

Why not discuss the problem in cinematography class? Show the prints and the negatives.

Best,
Helen