I recently purchased a 330F w/80mm lens. Both are in exceptional condition. Problem I am having is after developing my film I have noticed that the bottom of the negative seems to be over exposed. This is only right accross the bottom about 1/16th of an inch. The rest of the negative looks wonderful. This roll of film was shot using a flash. I don't know if this has anything to do with this problem or not.

Any suggestions welcome.

Kevin

-- Kevin B. Finigan (kfinigan@swbell.net), January 16, 1998

Answers

Is the film exposed -- namely black -- along the film edge, mostly outside the frame? If this is the case, and it's not uncommon with 120 film, you have fogged the edge of the film. You probably have either a light leak along one side of the camera back, or you didn't wind the film on the spool tightly enough when you unloaded.

Keep the film spool tightly wound when loading and unloading. If you try another roll, load and unload carefully in very dim light, but shoot brightly lit areas, you can probably isolate the source of your fogging.

If you have overexposed the bottom edge of each frame. In this case bottom meaning the bottom of the image as you hold the camera normally, I have a harder time imagining what the problem might be. I would still guess fogging, but the source is harder to nail down.

-- mike rosenlof (mrosenlof@qualcomm.com), January 16, 1998.

re-Neg Problem

If you've only run one roll thru it then you may not have a problem at all, try shooting a few more rolls with some images taken with flash and some without on the same roll and see what the results are. If the flash images have the problem and the others do not then it is most likely a synch problem with your shutter.

A question for you: Does the over-exposed strip run along the whole of the film or just in the image part of the film?

-- Chuck Baker (cbaker@skypub.com), January 16, 1998.

re:Neg Problem

The problem is just in the image area.

-- Kevin B.Finigan (kfinigan@swbell.net), January 19, 1998.

Since yours is a twin-lens camera, the film is transported from the base of the camera upward and so the bottom of the frames run across the negative. The source of the fogging therefore has to be a light leak, not overdevelopment/agitation or loosely wound film. Since the lens has a leaf shutter, it can't be a flash sync. problem either.

Given that the fogging doesn't extend beyond the image, the light must be coming in in front of the frame mask and therefore from the front of the camera. Is the lens clamped really flat? Are your wide-open images in focus top-to-bottom? Maybe there's a chink at the top or bottom. Any light coming in the bottom would reflect off the top of the mask -- which is, what? 1/16 inch thick?? -- along the top of the negative. And since the top of the negative in the camera represents the bottom of the image, you'd get exactly the symptom you describe.

-- Colin Potts (potts@cc.gatech.edu), March 05, 1999.