Strange worms on my negatives

[E. von Hoegh]

Wow. This one has me stumped. I have no clue what they might be.

[Andrew O'Neill]

On the negative the marks are black, therefore white in the print. Now I'm wondering if it is indeed static...

[Scott Walker]

Wow. This one has me stumped. I have no clue what they might be.

+1

Does not look like static to me, but I have no idea either.

I would start eliminating the possible causes of the problem.

I think the first thing I would do is give a box of the film to another photographer to use a half dozen sheets to see if he can replicate the problem.
If he can, problem solved, toss the film. If he can't then it is something you are doing and go on to step 2.
Step 2 - have your friend that tried the film for you load a half dozen holders with film at his place not yours, give them to you to expose, give them back for him to unload and give to you in a film box for you to develop them.
At this point you will know if it is a static problem in loading/unloading or a problem with development.

If you know what it is for sure it should be easy to cure.

[Sevo]

It is not static. Static has tree-like branches and looks quite like lightning - this is too rounded and not chaotic enough. It positively looks like friction marks - but any of tongs, trays, film holders and spools, plus careless handling of the sheets themselves can create friction marks, so pinning down the cause step by step seems a smart idea.

[Edmond3]

Thank You for all the energy everybody, I appreciate it. It has me stumped as well. I will continue to try to eliminate one possible cause at a time and spend a good amount of time shooting and processing this week. Mr Walker that is a sound idea. It is still weird to me how on each batch of shoots the marks are on the same part of the negative for that batch. hmmm... I don't use tongs and my touch is oh so delicate! So, does anybody who lives in the NYC area want to shoot the rest of my box of HP5 4x5 to see how it holds up?

[George Stewart]

Do you freeze your film? If so, it could be remnants of emulsion from the edge of the film. I've had similar appearing lines on my chromes and they've been attributed to freezing the emulsion. Apparently, strands come off during processing and come into contact with the films surface which affects development. I've never had the issue with self-developed B&W only professionally developed chromes - I freeze all my film.

[Michael_4514]

Edmund, here's my suggestion. Shoot a couple of negatives but don't process them, but give them to me. Then give me a couple sheets of unexposed film. I'll process the negatives that you shot. If no marks, then it's in your processing. If marks, I'll shoot the film and process to see if it's in the film itself. If no marks, I'll shoot another sheet, but you process, to see if its in your shooting set up.

If this works for you, send me a PM and we can arrange the details.

Mike

[frotog]

I used to get similar marks on c-41 large format negs. Turned out that they were caused by dust particles sandwiched between the downloaded sheets in the lightproof download box, imparting small scratches on the negs before development. Since then I've gotten into the habit of downloading my sheet film directly into glassines before sending to the lab.

[cdholden]

Reticulating emulsion on the film base?

[lenser]

The only thing I can relate this to is a very long ago experience with too warm developer. It happened on 35mm B&W that I souped in about 85 degree D-76 to try to hurry things up for a news/sports assignment with an early deadline.

Some of the frames had very similar trails that turned out to be bits of emulsion that had (for lack of a better term) boiled off of the film and then settled in random patterns like this. The densities varied because the bits came loose from different areas of some of the frames, therefore with different background tones, and the appearance, like with yours, varied just a bit in shape from each other and looked for all the world like peeled narrow strips of skin that you might get from peeling back a ragged cuticle from the edge of your finger nail.

The odd thing is that it did not reticulate, but just lost a few of these random strips that attached themselves where ever they landed.