Aztek 8000 Premier, orange/yellow cast near image edge + scan lines

[Chester McCheeserton]

Hi all,

I was once a moderately competent operator of these scanners. Recently I've gained access to one again and am trying to work out some rusty kinks. I keep seeing orange/yellow density changes at the edge of the image (scanning C-41 color neg, developed by LTI lab in nyc) and simply darker/more density at the edge of B&W film (mostly 35mm, processed by me).

I know my negs are probably generally slightly overexposed, but they're certainly not bulletproof - I don't remember having to perform this level of surgery at the edges all the time. Any tips? Besides putting down ruby lith tape around all 4 edges? that's the only thing that seemed to help, at least with the 35mm, I've never had to do it before with sheet film, but now I'm thinking might have too. Cropping is not an option. ))

I'm also getting scan lines, like you can see in image #4. Pretty sure they line up with the 1 inch pieces of stretchy tessa tape I use on the bottom of the mylar to pull it tight. But again, I never recall having this many issues with scan lines, it seems like I'm getting them on every 5x7 I do, this last one I scanned tonight at 4000 dpi and there are at least 8 scan lines that will need to be tediously retouched out if I'm going to use this scan.

Thanks

[Chester McCheeserton]

and how it looks on 35mm B&W:

[Mark Sampson]

I've no experience with that machine, but all that comes to mind is what the optical engineers call "stray light". Which can manifest itself in many ways... study your whole setup carefully. could be from some kind of reflection that's not obvious.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

How about a black mask and wet mount.

[Bruce Watson]

How about calling Aztek and asking them? If anyone knows for sure, it would be Aztek.

[Chester McCheeserton]

How about a black mask and wet mount.

these are wet mount.

[onnect17]

...

[Chester McCheeserton]

How about calling Aztek and asking them? If anyone knows for sure, it would be Aztek.

Evan emailed me some tips, he's always very helpful. But I thought I'd try the hive mind here.

[onnect17]

....

[Chester McCheeserton]

My guess also is you are not scanning using SilverFast.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's correct - I was trained to use and was using in this case the DPL software on the Aztek machines. Which is not perfect and has it's problems, but I don't think anyone who has learned it would say that silverfast is better.

I actually prefer good ole epson scan when I'm using a flatbed, silver fast I find incredibly difficult to control...although I'm sure many of you have figured it out.