What do film format numbers like 120 and 135 mean?
Asked 1/12/2017
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Film formats are often identified by numbers such as 120 and 135, while the actual image or film width may be described separately as 35mm, medium format, and so on. Do these numbers correspond to technical dimensions, or were they simply assigned names?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
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Kodak started making "pocket" cameras in 1895, and each new design used a different film format — different sizes, aspect ratios, cartridge types, and orientations. By 1908, they decided to simplify the confusion with a numbering scheme, calling that first format "101" and continuing the numbering up from there. So, that's the scheme — the numbers correspond to the order early Kodak cameras were released, starting with 101.
The 120 medium-format film still in use today is part of this sequence. However, when 35mm film came out, it appears they skipped from 130 ahead to 135, presumably for the nice alignment. And by the 1930s, they'd introduced some other variations — 620 and 616 were the same as 120 and 116 but with smaller spool diameters, and 220 was the same as but twice the length of 120.
Then, in the 1960s, Instamatic cameras were given 126 film, since the image size is about 26mm square — this matches the 135 and 35mm alignment, and the original 126 was no longer in use. And then when the smaller "Pocket Instamatic" cameras were introduced, they used 110 (again, discontinued in the original series long ago), apparently because it's smaller than 126 and "one-ten" was nicer to say than the possibly-logical 113 or 117.
Film for APS-C is 240 — I guess because, hey, why not.
I actually get into this a little bit in my answer to What historic reasons are there for common aspect ratios?, although obviously this is not a duplicate question. More on the numbering history can be found at these web pages: History of Kodak Roll Film Numbers and The History of Kodak Roll Films.
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
9y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
These numbers were generally product/designation codes, not direct measurements of the film size.
Kodak introduced many different roll-film formats for its early cameras, varying in size, aspect ratio, cartridge style, and orientation. To simplify things, Kodak adopted a numbering system in the early 1900s, starting with 101 and continuing upward. In that system, the numbers mainly reflected the sequence of formats/camera releases rather than film dimensions.
That’s why 120 does not mean 120mm, and 135 does not mean 135mm. The familiar 120 roll film is just one entry in that numbering series. 135 was later used for the standard 35mm still-camera cartridge format; despite the “35mm” film width, the format number itself is still just a designation.
Related examples support this: 220 is essentially 120 film at roughly double the length, and 620/616 were variants of 120/116 using different spool dimensions rather than different image sizes.
So in short: the numbers are mostly historical Kodak format codes, not technical size references.
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