What's wrong with this film?

Now I lean to believe in your theory. It may have experienced some sort of 'abuse' during handling. I actually bought a lot of films and these are a small part of the lot.

MartinP said:

I can't think of a simple way to double-expose on a correctly functioning Leica M, unless the whole roll was put through the camera twice. It looks as though it could be dampness, or some sort of 'abuse' to do with freezing/thawing etc, and in that case the damage would extend outside frame.

The labelling of the cassettes sounds a bit like this is film d-i-y spoolled from bulk, as I have seen the Arista film having been packaged in factory-cassettes with 'proper' labels on, by Foma. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will be unusable, but it adds questions. The film is so low-priced when new that buying a few rolls on Ebay seems counter intuitive, though the location of the OP might have a bearing on that.

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The pattern continues outside of the frame. It doesn't look like double exposure. I think the films were damaged for some reason. Just don't know whether its due to fungus or mold.

MartinP said:

If it's a double exposure then the effect will be seen only inside frame - the edges and perforations will be clear. If the pattern continues outside of the frame, on the negatives, then a picture of the negs (made by holding the strip up to the light and photographing it with a digi cam of some sort) would be helpful in further diagnosis.

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Dark pattern on the negative is some kond of exposure. Light pattern is something that prevents exposure.
You hva dark pattern on the negatives. That may be static electrisity, either generated when the cartridge was loaded, the film advanced in the camera or when it was rewound.
There may be more possibillities, but that is what I can think of at the moment.

Maybe damp and mold somethings attacked the emulsion. surface.

Ian

Mold would be visible on the emulsion's surface in reflected light. Anything that doesn't grow would not.

ndrs said:

Mold would be visible on the emulsion's surface in reflected light. Anything that doesn't grow would not.

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Look at that top edge of the film there's clearly emulsion missing.

Ian

MY experience with the Ultra.edu and foma brand films is that they are both packed in black cassettes, lately ones with the CP-xx and C-41 info under the paper label. Both have very dark edgeprinting with the frame numbers on one edge and the batch number and either "FOMAPAN" , "ULTRA" or just " PAN". The 120 version sometimes says "F PAN" also 400 for the 400 speed film. The BULK FOMA does NOT have edge printing.

MY guess is that someone had some film that got wet or other wise damaged and they sold it loose to cover that up. ALL the FOMA and ULTRA.EDU I have bought form Freestyle came in individual cardboard boxes.

Thread resurrection! I have similar symptoms with 20-year-old 70mm Tech Pan - see (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and scroll down for the image sample.

Given that I've received some tech pan that has evolved so far that it'd be legally allowed to vote, it would seem to support the notion that the original poster here also has something growing on their film.

In my case I can tell you for sure that it's not double exposures; I made my series of exposure test shots using film loaded directly from a factory-sealed Kodak box. In my case, you can barely see the fungus (?) on the surface of the film outside the image area but it has no silver density there. It's only where fungus AND optical exposure occur together that the effect is visible, as if the fungus is acting as a development catalyst.

The patterns are a little different on mine too.