Purple Scan Line Epson 3170

When I scan my negatives with my Epson 3170 I get a purple line

through them that I can't get to go away. I think this is a rather

new occurance, beginning over the past few months. Any suggestions or

experiences with this??

Erin - make sure the top one inch of the scanner glass (area that includes the calibration notch) is absolutely spotless and clean. This often clears up the streaks. Also, try making a few full length scans of the scanning bed with the scanner tilted on its side at 85 degrees or so to see if you can dislodge an errant speck of dust that may have settled on the internals.

<p> Doug<p>

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfisher/holder/mainintro.html">Dougs

MF Film Holder for batch scanning of 120/220 medium format film with flatbeds</a>

I've had similar problems recently and I've improved them, though I'm not sure why it worked in the end.

 

First I did a preview scan with the film holder, but no film and adjusted the input histogram so that the defects were very much "enhanced". That doesn't fix anything, but gives you an idea of whether you are getting anywhere. It also showed that the lighting over the length of the scanning area was nowhere near even - don't worry too much about that.

 

Next I cleaned the glass - just with a cloth.

 

I scanned again. This removed blotches where there was out-of-focus dust, but not the lines.

 

Next I used the cloth on the surface of the light strip in the scanner lid (the backlight). I am not sure why this should do anything.

 

I scanned again and the streaks were much improved.

 

I repeated both of these cleaning steps until the results were much better.

 

Simon

Hey there Erin, guess what was my first hit on google when I typed in 'purple line in scans' tonight. That's, right this thread :) As you know I have this same scanner... Did you ever get it fixed? My purple line is about 3 pixels wide and runs vertically alone the entire scan over on the left side 35mm holder.<div></div>

Erin, I just used some Zeiss lens cleaner on my scanner. I took it apart and cleaned the glass.

 

The problem is gone. But the experience wasn't confidence inspiring.<div></div>