Light Leak?

[Ken Lee]

Chemical stains during handling/processing ?

The stain is where a clip holds the film.

Who develops your film ?

[revdocjim]

This film was sent to the Fuji lab and I've had lots and lots of 120 and 135 film developed by them without problem, and several sheets of 4x5. But this is the first time I've seen anything like this.

[al olson]

revdocjim,

The larger bits appear to be lint, possibly from gloves that are not clean. If that is the case, so much for handling by the edges. I am assuming that these are on the emulsion side.

The fact that they are throwing shadows would indicate that they are not embedded in the emulsion, but instead lying on top, although some of the fibers may be sticking to the emulsion.

Try taking a PEC wipe with a little PEC cleaner on it and gently wipe over this area several times to see if they go away or are displaced.

It is not impossible that this area could be exposed by an oblique ray of light coming from the left. If this happened between exposure and development, you could be getting an image of the lint which would glow white and throw the shadow.

If this is the case, then the question would be what source of light would be in the darkroom that would expose such a small area of the negative. Was the film handled near something luminous such as a watch or glow tape or timer?

I do not conceive that the shadow would have been cast by your scanner.

[Bryan Lemasters]

I don't know if it helps at all but I found something interesting when I looked closely at the scan of this portion of the sheet. Dust specs generally show up as black spots. But in this part of the exposure there are numerous white spots and they have distinct shadows. What is especially strange to me is that the direction of the shadows indicate a light source opposite of where one would expect the light leak to have occurred. The light leak appears to have come from the right side. The shadows on the white specs indicate a light source coming from the left... FWIW, this corner is the only area where I found those white specs, and the don't come off with a blower so I'm inclined to think they are part of the exposure... Which leaves me completely confused.

Any thoughts?

Until I saw the shadows cast by the lint (?) my initial thoughts were a light leak at the loading hinge tape, but now.............

Looking at the direction of the shadows, the light source had to have come from the right, and slightly lower than the camera. In looking at the image the sunlight is behind and to the left of the camera (judging by shadow areas near the trees at lower left of the image). It would seem unlikely that a light leak through the light trap of the film holder would travel that far before striking the film, but that is the only conclusion that I can reach. A "hot spot" of sunlight might have been reflected from something to the right of the camera.

It would seem to me that an accidental light exposure during handling or processing should have increased the values in the shadow areas of the lint just a bit.

My 2 cents.