What are these red lines on my negative?

In a roll of cinestill I just got back, there are "tree branch"-looking red lines across some of the negatives. (Appears as one main red line and it branches out into other lines). It stretches from about image 25 - 32, & you can see the line drawn across all the negatives (not just on each frame, but across the spaces between too), yet pictures on the rest of the roll before and after those numbers came out completely fine.

Never had an issue like this before, wondering if it might be something with my camera (contax t2) or if this is more something like developing/from the lab ..?

I would think it's not a light leak of the film roll since images 33-36 following the damaged negatives came out clear.

The pattern reminds me of static electricity discharge, although that's often more focused. Given the color, it might have happened on the backside of the film, resulting in an unfocused patter on the emulsion. From a materials perspective, it's also more logical that the discharge would occur on the smooth backside.

What kind of film was this? How was it processed, and by whom?

Cinestill 8

koraks said:

The pattern reminds me of static electricity discharge, although that's often more focused. Given the color, it might have happened on the backside of the film, resulting in an unfocused patter on the emulsion. From a materials perspective, it's also more logical that the discharge would occur on the smooth backside.

What kind of film was this? How was it processed, and by whom?

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Cinestill 800T - Processed by the Icon

Sure looks like lightning - although fairly faint. Red suggests on the backside of the film. Stretching for 7 exposures seems like it might have happened at the lab. I think it's generally caused by dry conditions and quick spooling/unspooling.

ac123 said:

Cinestill 800T - Processed by the Icon

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Right; I suspected this. Cinestill film is Vision3 with the remjet backing missing. One of the functions of remjet is to prevent ESD-associated problems. I strongly suspect that Kodak's regular C41 film gets an antistatic treatment which protects mostly against this issue, but the Cinestill product will likely not have this.

It's a rare problem. I agree with @Don_ih on possible causes.

Definitely static electric discharge [lightning]. The air was very dry and the film was advanced quickly. Advance the film more slowly is very dry weather.

Sirius Glass said:

The air was very dry and the film was advanced quickly.

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Note the scene photographed. Seaside. Definitely not dry air. The problem most likely emerged in the lab when spooling the film, or even during film confectioning.

Crazy, now that I think about it the frames that have this were all at the beach while the hurricane/trop storm was passing through California on Sunday...

It's not literal lighting, as in the weather phenomenon. It's mini-scale lighting - it's the kind you get when you pull a woolen sweater over your head on a dry winter's day, or when petting the cat. The 'lighting' term used by others above is a bit unfortunate and confusing, IMO.

In fact, hurricane weather is pretty much the opposite of when you'd expect this to happen, since it's typically rather humid. This phenomenon happens especially when relative humidity is very low. Odds are this didn't happen at the beach, at all. My guess is that this happened either at the lab, or during film confectioning at the plant that packaged the film.

@ac123 Any chance you could show an image of the negative strip affected, something like this?