It’s just 120.
Yeah, you heard me. It’s not 120 of anything. Just 120.
For Og’s sake, take a fucking look at it.
Is it 120mm wide? No, it’s about 60mm wide. Is it 120mm long? No, it’s a lot longer than that, once you unroll the thing. About half a meter, not counting the backing paper. It sure as hell isn’t 120mm thick.
I am talking about 120 format film. Most of what photographers call “medium format” is shot on 120, or its lengthier cousin, 220. But these numbers have nothing to do with millimeters. They are, in fact, pretty arbitrary. See, back in the day, Kodak went and gave numbers to all their myriad film formats. Here’s a list. A particular format, which was 35mm wide, was really popular, so for convenicne they called it 135. And that stuff people stuck in their paralax roloflexes was named 120. But the number 120 has nothing whatsoever to do with the film’s dimensions.
Well, the cameras have gotten a lot fancier than your 50 year old roloflex. Here’s mine. But it’s the same old 120 format film. Each image is six centimeters wide and 4.5 tall. It’s a thing of beauty, really, to look at a perfectly processed chrome that big. But the misconception persists, even in the professional world.
“We process 120mm film!” A sign in a photo lab reads. “Not my film,” I think very loudly. Surely the person who printed that sign has handled zillions of rolls of 120 film. Did he ever care to notice that 120 milimeters cannot be found therein? I’ll give my negs to labs who know what 120 means, dammit. There are a few of them, believe it or not. I was in B&H the other day, and staring up at me was a pack of “120mm” film storage sleeves. You would think that of all the people who must have been involved in creating, labeling, selling, marketing and improving this product, somewhere along the line, would notice that not a single part of it could fit anything that was 120mm long.
This rant isn’t about photography, though. It’s about paying attention. Think for a minute. Imagine what 120mm looks like. That’s 12 centimeters. Maybe about the length from your wrist to the end of your fuckyou finger. A little less than five inches. About the diameter of a CD. So one of these rolls of film couldn’t possibly be 120mm wide, could it? So how could so many people, with direct evidence to the contrary staring them in the face, assume that it is?
Man, that pisses me off.
