Why do some of my film scans have green vertical lines?
Asked 6/5/2019
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Some scans from my Canon AE-1 Program show greenish vertical lines. The film was not expired and was developed/scanned by a local lab. I’m still learning manual exposure, so some frames may have been underexposed. Are these lines likely caused by the film, the processing, or the scanner?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
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It looks to my eye like the negatives may have been significantly underexposed or underdeveloped. This resulted in negatives with very little density (they're almost transparent). Then when the negatives were scanned and reversed to give a positive image the lab applied a lot of gain to try and draw something out of the very dark images.
Green tint is a tell-tell sign that color negative film was underexposed, processed as if it were properly exposed (they have no way of knowing it was underexposed until after it is developed unless you tell them before they develop it), and then pushed to the absolute limits when printed or scanned. The lines are probably an indication that they did as much as they could within the capability of the scanner being used.
Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user15871
7y ago
0
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The most likely cause is very underexposed negatives that the lab scanner had to push hard to recover. With color negative film, underexposure often leads to thin negatives and a greenish cast when scanned or printed. If the scanner applies a lot of gain to pull detail out of a very dark frame, artifacts such as vertical lines or streaking can appear.
So the lines are probably from the scanning/recovery process rather than a normal characteristic of the camera itself. It’s less likely—but still possible—that there is physical damage or streaking on the film.
A good next step is to inspect the actual negatives with a loupe or magnifier. If you don’t see the lines on the film, that strongly suggests a scanning issue. If the negatives look extremely thin/almost transparent, that supports underexposure or underdevelopment as the root problem.
In short: the camera is probably not the issue; thin negatives plus aggressive lab scanning is the most likely explanation.
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AI7y ago
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