Severe Banding on Epson 4990

[Peter Lewin]

Question from one new to digital processing. I have started making contact sheets directly from my 4990, by taping a PrintFile page flat on the scanner bed, scanning in Epson Scan as "film in film area guide" and printing the entire 8x10 scan as a contact sheet. Most of the time this works fine. But occasionally, if I have some badly under exposed frames (I'm getting the problem primarily with 6x6 film, where I occasionally have one or two really badly exposed shots interspersed among the twelve images) the whole scan is horribly streaked, as well as being very dark. However I'm sure it isn't a physical scanner defect, since with evenly exposed negatives the "contact sheet" comes out fine, and if I take individual strips from the "banded" PrintFile page and scan them in the holders, they also scan correctly. Any suggestions, or is this just a problem because the 4990 tries to find an exposure for the entire sheet and is thrown off by the few incorrectly exposed frames? (The problem is easy to resolve when I'm making 4x5 contact sheets, since I simply throw away any badly exposed negatives, so they never get mixed in on the PrintFile pages for that format.)

[Doug Fisher]

Are you using the film area guide so the scanner calibrates correctly?

Doug

[Michael Graves]

Up toward the top of the scanning bed, near the hinge, is a small opening. That must be kept clear if you are to avoid this effect. Can't count the number of bad words I said before I checked Epson's support site. If you can keep 1/4" to 1/2" of that area free, you should be all right.

[Peter Lewin]

Just wanted to thank Doug and Michael, problem solved. I was using the film area guide, but didn't realize that the area above the white line (the area Michael posted about) was critical, and at the time I had some of the masking tape holding down the PrintFile in that area. It was only today that I had some new 120 film to proof, and "careful taping," making sure that the 1/2" calibration area was clear, solved the problem!

[Peter Lewin]

Since I received such quick and useful responses to my first question, another beginner's question. I'm using Adobe Elements 11 for learning, and printing on my general purpose Canon iP4300 (with the thought that at some point on the learning curve I'll upgrade to full Photoshop, and get a dedicated photo-grade printer). I scan as black & white (Epson scan), and don't do anything with color in Elements. (For full disclosure, the negatives, processed in PMK staining developer, are slightly yellow-green, which is normal for PMK.) My rudimentary processing consists of cropping, adjusting lighting and contrast globally, and some local adjustments. I resize the files to fit on 8 1/2 x 11 photo paper (again, inexpensive Canon Pixma), reduce to 300 dpi, and print. Here's the part that puzzles me: sometimes I get prints in pure grey scale (which is what I would expect), but sometimes there is a definite sepia tint, rather as if I were toning with selenium. I actually like the "toned" color tint more, but I'm not doing anything to cause it, and it happens seemingly at random. Any thoughts as to what is happening?