Pixiq

Newton's rings are a pesky artifact that can show up in your Impossible print scans.

Laying a glossy surface on a scanner glass will almost certainly produce newton rings. The way I understand it, Newton's rings are a phenomenon caused by the reflection of light between two surfaces. The surface of the glass is flat while the glossy surface of the film is slightly irregular. The light passing through the glass and reflecting back through the airspace between the surfaces can cause the rings to show up in your scans. The results of this occurrence produces an interference pattern that is visible in many scanner situations.

These little swirly concentric lines can ruin an otherwise great scan. To avoid Newton rings it is important to keep the surfaces apart. If you want to reduce the chances of Newton's rings when scanning your Impossible Silver Shade, Fuji FP-100 or Polaroid SX-70 films, here is an easy fix that I find works pretty well.

Simply, use the empty Impossible film cassette or Polaroid cassette as a platform for your scans.

Before you start, you might want to tape over the contacts on the bottom of the holder. These contacts are actually the battery contacts that power your camera when you shoot these types of films.

Carefully slide a single film that you want to scan, back into the slot at the bottom end of the cassette. There is a spring pressure plate that needs to be pushed down slightly near the slot as you slide the film into place. The pressue plate also holds your image tight against the window of the cassette. Once in position, place the cassette face down on the glass and scan. There should be enough depth of focus to provide a fairly sharp result. I always sharpen after the scan using Photoshop rather than allowing the scanner to do it for me. When finished scanning slide the image out and replace it with another. this technique keeps the surface of the image off of the scanner glass and should keep your scan free of Newton's rings.

The cassettes can also make nice frames for images to hang on your studio wall. 

In the past, I have used a number of methods to help solve this problem with other films and glossy surfaces. In the old days of film scanning using a drum scanner, we occasionally used a tiny bit of corn starch. A very tiny puff was squeezed into the air and the transparency to be scanned was passed through this tiny cloud. The very fine grains of starch would adhere to the surface long enough to make a perfect scan. While I do not reccommend this for every scan, it can be useful for those difficult situations.