So, re-washing didn't help. It appears, as was suggested elsewhere, that what I'm seeing is a chemical reaction, probably between the plastic of the sleeve and the emulsion side of the negative. The images in question have been in the "archival" sleeve for about 35 years...
Or it was something in the environment to which the plastic was porous. I've been in one house and three apartments in that period, and though I aimed for a cool, dry, dark place for storage.... Who knows?
Thanks again for your thorough response,
Steve

Boris
That's a distinct possibility. These were stored in clear "archival" film sleeves, six rows holding six frames each. If that's what you're thinking of switching to, please don't. At least not Q-Pic. I don't have access to a microscope, or an enlarger, right now to confirm.

Tonight I'm going to try E.L..'s rewash suggestion. I'll let y'all know the results.
Steve

Thank you: I hadn't thought of trying to (re)sharpen the image after spot removal. That's brilliant.

Steve

I no longer have the software disk that came with the scanner. I'm also not sure it would work on a new Mac.

VueScan software is doing some clean-up, but it's not enough to eliminate the problem.

Ed

So, I've downloaded Elements. I haven't figured out the optimum slider settings to use. So far a radius around 9 with a threshold in the 20's seems to remove spots without giving up detail. It has some odd effects -- the hi-light in the eyes gets deleted, as well as the narrow bright rim of glasses.

I'll play with it. HENLOPEN has an interesting addition: after removing the spots, he re-sharpens the image.

Also, it may turn out that I can use this technique to get rid of myriad small spots without giving up too much detail, but still have to use the clone tool for larger ones. This should still but my processing time by 80%. fingers crossed.

Steve

ELEE

Thank you, Ed. When I tried similar in Affinity Photo and Luminar 4, it turned the whole image to mush. Perhaps Elements works differently. I'll try it.

DJBAD

No, unfortunately. They're random in position, shape, density and size: on any strip of six negatives there can be almost none, or almost completely filling a frame. They can be small -- about 25 times the size of a piece of grain, or about half an inch at 500x. Most are dead white (the scanner software reverses the negative), a few are mottled.

First of all thanks for detailed instructions.

Fortunately (or forthoughtfully ;<} ) I bought a fresh bottle of photo-flo the same time I bought film cleaner. So, I can try the re-wash theory.

worth trying.
Thanks

I'm scanning old negatives using a Nikon Coolscan V and I'm finding these white spots of various sizes and shapes on them. And it's the inverse of what you'd expect: negatives stored 'improperly', as in stuffed in an envelope, scan clean. One's in Q-Pic archival plastic sleeves have the spots.

All were processed the same way: one of various b/w developers, kodak stop bath, kodak fixer, thorough wash and then kodak photo-flo. Excess liquid removed by running the film between two fingers or wiping with lint free photo-wipes.

When the image is on the monitor full frame, you can only see one or two on the better ones. The uploaded sample is blown up from a 1"x.85" segment of a scan which loads in as an 11x17 16 bit gray tiff file at about 330 dpi. (it varies a little depending on how/whether the negative is cropped in scanning.)

So far, I've been processing these in Affinity Photo using the clone tool. This takes twenty minutes to half an hour per frame. I have several hundred rolls of film to scan. While I don't know how many are damaged, cleaning them with Affinity isn't doable. I tried denoise in Affinty and Luminar 4, but to work enough to blend the spots into the background, they turn the image to mush (or I'm doing it wrong...)

I tried Cleaning a strip with PEC-12 Photographic Emulsion Cleaner. It seemed to work a bit but not enough to save me from a massive clone job.

Please suggest how I can clean these. Thanks, all.

Nikon's yearly range is 5.82 to 11.02, today's close is 8.85. So, yeah it's up 50% from it's low. It's also down ~25% from it's high (I don't have a calculator handy, so don't shoot me if I'm off). Therefore, tomorrow it will be up. Or down. Or maybe unchanged.
Some smart people say tech (and Nikon is tech) is in a bubble, that has recently burst; and that the market has topped and we haven't noticed yet. Nobody knows. But history says retail investors always pile into the market at the top. And Warren Buffet says "Be fearful when others are greedy...."
So, tell your friend that if he's looking to invest, Nikon is a good company, and the Nikkei just broke 30000 for the first time in over a decade. If he's looking to gamble.... I have no advice, but I wouldn't choose Nikon.

My bona fides? I made enough on GME and AMC to get the new Fujifilm coming out next month and a few sharp lenses, for me and both of my kids. And I wouldn't know reddit from blueit.

Well, you've gotten some really good advice, and some snark.

One thing I wonder about is: you said you'd done some corporate work for the groom before. I'd bet you didn't over-do the bokeh bit with them, nor leave the president of the company out of focus.... never mind.

So here's my 2 cents: don't do weddings where you MUST please the client. Do art photography -- shoot what you like, how you like it. Anyone else, who likes your work, can buy it. Anyone else, who doesn't or finds it not to their 'taste', can move on. No harm, no foul.

Beautifully, brilliantly said (and gently, too!)

Thanks for that. I always thought I was mildly dyslexic, since it effects my reading, too. LOVE spellcheck.

Ksocha:

There is a website that list high short interest stocks -- https://www.highshortinterest.com/ If you put them into a watchlist and observe price and volume trends, you can find those with multiples of the average daily volume, where the price is going up. The trick is to buy lots of them. Expect to lose money on half to three quarters of them. My recent experience is the last quarter has returned 8.2 times my total investment.

I got into gamestop at three and change and got out at seventy-seven. Not three forty, but not 'a poke in the eye with a piece of spaghetti', either.

Be careful, but have fun.