One of our librarians found negatives that I’m guessing date back to the 80’s. They appear to have been part of a roll that held 18 frames, but the film appears to be about 50mm wide, with no perferations along the edges. What film format is this?
My guess would be a film strip (but I would think the librarian would know that). We used these a lot in grade and high school when I was young. It was used to illustrate a lesson. The number 18 sounds about right, too.
Filmstrips wouldn’t be negatives, they’d be positive, like slides. Most filmstrips were produced on 35mm film.
I’m familiar with a lot of different film formats, but for conventional photography, most of them died out well before the 1980s. By then, it was mostly 35mm and 120mm. If you could measure the actual area of an image on the film, I could probably tell you what format it is. I presume the 50mm is the width of the whole film. Does it have sprocket holes? This would indicate it was probably motion picture film of some oddball format, but those mostly are 35mm or 70mm. More information is needed.
Update:
I got a chance to measure the film. It’s 60mm wide, no perferations. The images are 58mm x 42mm, 1cm apart on the strip. I suppose it could have been a 70mm format, but if the perferations were cut off, it was a very tidy job. Also, the film color isn’t perfect, and the edges show signs of underdevelopment.
Sounds like 220, which was 120 on an extra-length roll. A variety of image sizes on them - they’re 6 cm wide. I found an ad for a Fuji camera that took 9 shots per roll of 120, 18 shots per roll of 220.
Over-enthusiastic editing - a variety of image sizes ARE SHOT on them. And I meant to say that that’s just 120, not 120 mm. The width is your 60 mm. Beats me why they call it 120 - I’m sure somebody will know.
Hmm… I thought it might have been the old 2 1/4 3 1/4 format but the sizes don’t work out, it’s more like 2 1/4 1 5/8. There were a lot of 2 1/4 formats but I’d have to look this one up. A lot of 120 roll film cameras used oddball formats, the width is all the same (obviously it can’t be wider than the film) but of different lengths (speaking with respect to the long dimension of the film).
And oops, I was wrong, 120 film isn’t 120mm. IIRC, it’s called 120 because it was originally cut from 120mm film into two strips 60mm wide. Something like that.
That?s 120 film shot in 645 format. As has already been said, 120 film is 60mm wide but within that a number of different formats are used. The common ones are:
645 - nominally 60 x 45 mm, though actually a little smaller to leave space for a border. Popular with amateur medium format enthusiasts and wedding photographers because the cameras are relatively compact and economical on film.
6x6 - nominally 60 x 60mm, also dubbed 21/4 square by those preferring inches. Cameras using this format include Hasselblad and Rolleiflex.
6x7 - sometimes called “ideal format” as it fits standard paper sizes well. Mainly used by professionals for the superior quality of bigger negatives, though the cameras are quite bulky (e.g. Mamiya RB67, Pentax 67) and tend to work best on a tripod.
6x9 - never quite made it to the mainstream but still popular among a small community of enthusiasts who like its panoramic aspect ratio.
Noblex is the best-known (I think) maker of 2 1/4 panoramic cameras. They use a freaky rotating lens technique. I don’t know the image size, but it’s got to be 6x12 or so.
Fuji and Linhof both make 6x17 panoramic cameras (image is 170mm or 6.7in wide :eek: ).
Say, thanks a lot for the information. With this knowledge, I can now out-inform the reference librarians. Not a small feat, mind you.