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That 'ghost' in my old photos was just a lens smudge the whole time
I was scanning a bunch of old family slides from my dad's Canon AE-1, probably 200 of them from the 80s, and every single shot from our 1987 camping trip to Yosemite had this weird hazy blob in the corner. I spent a whole afternoon convinced it was some kind of spirit or light leak, zooming in and adjusting contrast. Then I flipped the slide over and saw a greasy fingerprint right on the mount, which made the exact same shape when I held it against my desk lamp. Has anyone else wasted hours on a mystery that turned out to be something dumb like dust on the scanner or a smudged lens?
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lisar141mo ago
Man, that's the classic trap. Dust on the scanner has fooled me more times than I care to count. But a greasy fingerprint on the slide mount is a whole other level of annoying, that's practically invisible until you backlight it. Spent an entire evening once convinced my old film had some weird light leak, turns out it was just cat hair stuck to the glass bed. The worst part is how confident you get before you figure it out, zooming in like a detective on a crime show. I'd rather it be a ghost at this point, at least that would be interesting.
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andrew9161mo ago
ha @lisar14 literally describing my life, I once cleaned my lens for 20 minutes before realizing the "mystery blob" was just a smudge on my eye. Ghost would've been way less embarrassing.
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