Holier Cow – Part 2 – Charles Fabbri Photography

I had a heck of a time trying to scan these pictures. First, my flatbed scanner decided to put lines in most of the roll. Something is wrong with a pixel in the linear scanner head that’s putting that streak along the photos randomly. Some photos on previous rolls, did have a scratch along the emulsion, but this was not that. I had scanned them all in, and when I went back to edit them I noticed this stupid, ugly line going through most of the pictures.

Well that’s okay, I had another scanner. I’ll just use that. It was an older Acer Scanwit dedicated film scanner. Well………… the motor that moves the film holder in and out crapped the bed, so it couldn’t scan film any more.

Now I don’t have a scanner. I had to borrow the scanner I gave my mother so I can get this film scanned in. It’s a flatbed scanner identical to the one I have, but I got that one brand new. I got mine off of ebay, and it’s been a thorn in my side ever since. In addition to all the usual problems with flatbed scanners (the first, second and third being dust, dust, and more dust), it had a dead pixel on the scan head out of the box. I’ve avoided that so far, but now where the film holder contains the second strip, I have same problem (albeit intermittently)…. great.

I got a much higher quality, dedicated film scanner coming in the post, so I’m excited to see if that works any better. In the meantime, I have my mother’s flatbed scanner to use.

This was the first time I shot Ilford Pan F+ film. I was expecting a little less grain on the film, since it’s a 50 ISO film. They didn’t come out bad at all, but I was expecting more of a Rollei RPX 25 or Kodak TMax 100 look. Still, I had fun with it. It could also be a scanner setting issue. For all I know, if I were to try to print these on an enlarger, it could be perfect.

I took these at the same time I was taking the color photos. As with those, I had a problem with the back light with the cows. I was able to tone a bunch of those problems down, but I did have some difficulty.

Actually, looking back at this set, they’re definitely not as grainy as I remember them when editing. These pictures are actually pretty smooth. For some reason I had it seared into my mind that these were way too grainy and too similar to Ilford HP5+.