As most of you have seen in the Gallery, I got carried away again this year with snow pictures. Several folks have pointed out a pecular color cast. Included on the left is one of the "raw" negative scans (Nikon LS-1000). The film was Fujicolor HQ100. The sky was mostly clear, and slightly blue. The coloring becomes very apparent when turning the saturation up all the way. [To really see it in the original, cover the version on the right with a piece of paper.] We've speculated bad development, or a broken scanner, but the color variatons seem to track variations in the terrain. So do not appear to be either of these reasons. My best guess here is that the color variations are perfectly "normal" resulting from differences in sunlight and shade, and some residual green color in the underbrush. The exact colors appearing may not be corrected correctly. Fujicolor is noted for maybe 'exagerating" colors a bit. I don't think the color variation is necessarily "bad." The color of "white" is an exciting exploration in itself. But I'm posting this here to solicit anyone's insights.

However... Now, I am REAL confused. Light leak?

Don't get mad at me, but I think it's the quality of your film's emulsion. Snow is really dificult to shoot for a camera, so I assume the film is not picking up the right tones all over the shot. If you'd do this on for instance Fuji Velvia (E6 film), the colors would be much blue-er, but much more evenly that this. I can't really reccomend using color negative film - the whole c41 process was developed as a film for easy/quick color printing for consumers. The pro films like HQ100/160 are in a way upgraded consumer films. (Don't get angry ;) But I'm not completely sure that that is the real reason....perhaps someone else knows ? Btw, in case you know the photo.net site, a search for that film with that problem might turn up some answers.

It's funny that you bring this up, Misha. I had noticed
the coloring in this series and almost mentioned it, but
I had thought it might have been either a natural effect
(such as a prismatic effect on the sunlight due to ice
crystals) or a postprocessing effect. Whichever, it seems
fairly subtle, and since I like color gradients anyway, I
found it to be a pleasent effect.

If it's not a light leak in the camera or bad film, then
the only other explanation I can think of is the prismatic
effect of ice/snow crystals (only a whole bunch of them
spread over the field of view).

I'd prefer to call it a happy accident. Plain old white?? Who needs it! Besides, technically, white is all the colours of the rainbow together. Presuming that one of those colours is EVER SO SLIGHTLY more apparent than all the others, which is not hard to imagine, would that cause the strange tones picked up by the film? Keep in mind that the human eye posseses arguably the best lens in the world, in part because it discards what would be either confusing, or useless information to the brain. Film probably isn't so picky. ry

Rork - Of course I wouldn't get mad at you. The film companies make the Pro emulsions for a reason. One certainly could expect strange behaviour when working in the extremes. Yore explanation isvery plausable. ASalina -The prismatic notion is interesting. Maybe it could also be some sort of lens flair?

Slynk -Thanks. I sort of liked the colors myself.

Ok, I just noticed something else. Misha, did you rotate the camera for a portrait type of shot in the second image?

Look what happens when the second image is rotated to the
same (camera) orientation as the first. The patterns of color
abberations are nearly identical. This makes me think that
it's not a natural effect (i.e. prism stuff).

I wonder what would happen if you were to take a few test
shots with the same camera/lens/film; one shot of a white
sheet of paper with a spot light source in a darkened room,
and another shot of a black background with the light source
shining on the camera itself, in order to induce
light leakage.

Once you've got your test shots scanned in, jack up the saturation
and look for that pattern of color in them.

ASalina -Yes I did notice the rotation. I'll run some camera tests. Also some scanner tests.

It appears to be a scanner artifact. Bummer! I tried passing the same negative through the scanner in both directions.

Alpha -Going way back up to the top, it is an old Nikon LS-1000. I've done some surfing around the news groups, and found three or four people with exactly the same problem. It seems that it is a known problem with the LS-1000, and has been fixed in later models. Only really shows up when scanning fairly dense negatives (as with snow). For normal subjects it is not a problem. [BTW, the "noise" I've been seeing in the snowy foreground is NOT negative crud, but also a known problem with the old Nikon at the denser ranges.] I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about this. Maybe ignore the problem, as it only seems to occur at extreme ranges.