Damn stripes on my negatives

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yup. Looks like static.

[Harley Goldman]

Correct, Greg. The squiggly lines are sailboat masts reflected in water.

How does one eliminate static? This film was exposed on a cool, wet, foggy morning at the Santa Barbara harbor. I would think those are not great conditions for static buildup? But I am no scientist.

[jp]

I doubt it's static.. But I don't know static. I keep film holders in pink anti-static bags. The worst part of static for me is that plastic film and dark slides can attract dust when statically charged.

[Bruce Watson]

Correct, Greg. The squiggly lines are sailboat masts reflected in water.

Those long straight parallel lines look like reflections off of the hard plastic edge of the film holder that's holding the film down flat. If the edge is nice and shiny, this can sometimes happen when the light is just right. The "cure" is to take the sheen off the rails and edges. Use a very fine sandpaper, a dulling spray, whatever you want.

Or, you can just ignore it. That's what I did. Saw this exact same thing once, figured out what caused it, thought about the likelihood that it would happen again, and decided to ignore it. And I haven't had it happen again since.

BTW, this didn't happen with the Quickloads because that's a different kind of film holder.

[Harley Goldman]

Thanks for your insight, Bruce.

Unfortunately for me, this has not been a one-off occurrence. Out of the last two processing runs of 16 sheets, I had this show up on three sheets. I have been getting one or so per 10 sheets. With some it is hardly noticeable and with others it is a big problem. I need to fix it.

[Michael Graves]

Have you any of the film left from the same box that you haven't exposed yet? You could tray-develop a sheet on the off chance that it was a defective box of film and that the marks occurred in either manufacture or packaging.

[Jim Noel]

Plain water only for the pre-soak. Metaborate seems to always cause problems.

[Harley Goldman]

Michael,

This has been on ongoing problem for me for many, many months. I have gone through numerous boxes of Acros during that period, so I don't think it is the film.

Based on the uniformity of the lines (and the line thickness variance around the cutouts of the holder), I am guessing it has to be film-holder related.

[Brian C. Miller]

Harley, I think that the tape is old, and as the holders flex, they are leaking a bit of light. So as the holder flexing is random, and the exposure to, say, sunlight is random, then this pattern shows up randomly. The key is that the edge of the film is exposed, and in the pattern of the film holder flap.

The other thing that could be happening is that the dark slide isn't seating all the way into the holder, and so that could account for a tiny light leak there, with that flap pattern.

[vinny]

I don't think it can be a tape issue. I have some really old, nasty holders with rotten tape that's coming off on the ends. No light leaks. Gaffer's tape isn't completely opaque either. What I'm getting at is the flap doesn't need tape to be light proof by design. Right?