Adventures in Telecine Vignettes

So I blogged about how I picked my camera for my telecine previously. So I've been tinkering with settings and trying to figure out just how to get the best image quality. Increase exposure, decrease gain, adjust white temperature, etc. Then I came across an interesting artifact I didn't think I'd see.

Here is what my blank canvas looks like. Nothing special. I compared the colors from the far left with the colors from the far right and the center and they match perfectly.

A typical frame capture from the box and you'll note a pretty strong vignette happening. That upper right corner is almost completely black, but it isn't on the source. I had to investigate.

I moved the camera to the right side of the frame and a lot of that vignette disappears.

Who would have thunk it. Same on the left.

Shoving the camera in real real close and letting it stay out of focus shows a slightly different vignette effect.

Pulling the camera further out shows almost no vignette of the original source. You can still tell that the blue of the sky in the middle is a lighter tone than that of the surrounding sky but it doesn't drastically drop off. Of course I'm going to lose some of my resolution, but the colors are truer which is more important to me.

*The last shot shows a slight obstruction from a piece of wood in the bottom left corner. This was just experimentation after all.

I'm going back to the camera and see if fiddling with some of the settings might increase or decrease the vignette effect. If I can't find something worthwhile at least I made some progress today.

Here is a follow up with just to make sure the vignette wasn't a complete optical illusion.