The longest Survivor: 120 or 135 format?

[Rob-F]

The clerk in one popular store in St. Louis said that 120 film will live after 135 is gone, because of the detail 120 can capture. In another store, one that serves both amateurs and Pros, the opinion is that 135 will last longer, because there are so many 35mm cameras.

What do you think?

 

[jwicaksana]

135 will last longer I think, many entry level and toy cams are in 135 format. The sales of this market segment is growing.
More emulsions are available in 135 too AFAIK.

 

[Godfrey]

I think it's a toss up. The speculation depends on who's talking and their particular biases.

I suspect both film types may be around for about the same amount of time, despite the fact that with "full frame" digital, 35mm film is well outstripped by dynamic range, sensitivity, and resolution. Medium format digital is not the same as medium format film, either in format size or in cost of equipment, so there is more logical potential for 120 film to be around longer. But these things rarely operate on logic alone.

G

 

[fuji645]

I'd like to hope that 120 would survive since I have a lot of medium format cameras. However, with Fuji still making 35mm film cameras (at least in their home market), as well as the tremendous amount of still functioning 35mm cameras still around, I would think that 135 will be around for quite a while. Who knows, maybe 120 will survive as a "fine art" product like the store rep said. Meanwhile, I'll just keep shooting my Mamiyas, Fuji's and Zenobia's.

 

[keytarjunkie]

As someone who only shoots 220 and 4x5. I don't think medium and large format has a chance, except Ilford who has their own loyal customer base for custom-sized ultra large format films. 35mm has a much bigger market.

 

[Harry Lime]

135 will outlast 120 until the last die hard Leica M shooter takes the last roll of Tri-X to their grave.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

As long as there is a market for one, the other will be around since they both start off as the same stock.

Phil Forrest

 

[f6andBthere]

I think if 120 disappeared analog photography would be over for me. 🙁

135 is ok in a mix but on it's own has little appeal.

 

[pakeha]

120. all movie making will be digital.120 will be left as a niche market covered by the Chinese and a few european companies.Leica will have no bearing what so ever.
I`ll be long dead so does not really matter either way.

 

[Ezzie]

I hope 120 will outlive 135, but it will probably no matter have lasted longer than 135, it has 33 year head start 🙂

 

[Markus]

An invention from the cinema technology the only surviving? 120/220 is the real photography medium 😉

 

[sevo]

As long as there is a market for one, the other will be around since they both start off as the same stock.

Not really, no. 120 and (small size thin) sheet film can both be made off the same base, but 135 generally is different - it lacks the gelatin anti-warp back coating of the bigger formats, and has a thicker base with a light-piping prevention dye.

135 has potential future issues as the required anti-light-piping substrate has no other application. If film volumes get too small to absorb the minimum amount that can be produced at a reasonable price, we might be out of a suitable acetate or polyester base, and the 120/sheet alternative, clear film, means that we'd have to load the cameras in a dark bag (which would predictably kill all applications outside the enthusiast market).

120 has rather complicated spooling and a backing paper with little to no other applications - issues with the backing paper (like chemical fogging of the film or poor opacity) already are occurring among the smaller makers, and the last automatic 127 spooling machine was scrapped years ago (all 127 available in the last years was hand spooled by one blind staff member at Fotokemika). But the clear stock needed is shared with many other industries, spooling machines are a task for a small machine workshop, and any printer can provide the kind of mediocre backing paper the smaller makers use by the thousand, so the outside dependencies are resolvable even at a very small volume.

Film industry insiders tend to be more worried about the fate of 135, as it is dependent on one externally procured unique product that has a very high minimum production volume, and as its customer base is used to extremely competitive or even destructive pricing and probably would not stay along over a dramatic price increase or loss of daylight loading convenience.

 

[thegman]

I would guess roughly the same. 35mm is easier and cameras are more plentiful, but it's easier to replace with digital. If you use medium format on tripods with slow film, and scan/enlarge carefully, you're going to have a harder job replacing that with digital.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Thinking about the rate of change in technological time, I'd give film maybe 10 years at most, but at the extreme outside, a human generation...perhaps 30 years. It is only a matter of time before the camera makers nail the actual look of 35mm or 120 film. Software does a pretty good job now. Five more years of technology advancement, combined with the economics and practical issues involved in film production, will kill any incentive to continue film production.

The other factor will be the general decline in people over the next 10 to 30 years who are able or interested in repairing film cameras, and parts to repair them. The viability of continued film production is only one bit of this equation. Most film cameras made over the last 20 years depend on some kind of now obsolete electronics to function fully.

 

[sevo]

It is only a matter of time before the camera makers nail the actual look of 35mm or 120 film.

I doubt that that would make a difference, one way or the other. Film has a potential of survival because it has a tradition people can tap into - but what people make out of that tradition is entirely modern, and extremely variable. Ten years ago, DSLRs were considered to have beaten film as they had become capable of the lacklustre look of overprocessed scans of oversaturated slide film filling the ad spreads of the period. But soon after, Lomography redefined "the actual look of film", eventually spreading from hipster artists to art directors/art buyers and on to the great unwashed. By now that look has become so universal as to make the fake-Lomo Instagram the hit of several seasons in a row.

A year or two on, "tradition" will be something else - perhaps not even film, we might soon encounter recursions to early electronic photography, people already are dabbling in "retro" video stills printed on a CSC or playing around with digital scan backs. But as long as mainstream digital cameras are still in the imitating period and devoid of all originality, they cannot themselves spawn a tradition - and as long as that is so, people will look to film (and accordingly play with film, if only to figure out what they want to execute, at full blown marketable product scale, with a digital device) when looking for inspiration from the past.

 

[Bobfrance]

If 120 goes then I'll have to move over to making my own large format wet plates. It's not too big a loss I intend to do that someday anyway.

 

[Austerby]

My predictions for the next 20 years are:

1. No problems with film supply, though there will be changes in the films available

2. After 20 years the film-period cameras become increasingly difficult to maintain or are further marginalised in use. Lomography cameras continue to find a market as the primary alternative to digital.

3. There continues to be production of 120 and MF pinhole cameras, such as the Harman Titan and others. These continue to work indefinitely with no complex mechanical components to maintain.

4. Film will become more expensive.

5. Photographic chemicals will be widely available.

I think there is something fundamentally appealing about the analogue photographic process that will not go away - there will always be a set of people who continue to be fascinated by the magic of negatives and the darkroom.

 

[Peter_Jones]

Canvas, brushes and oil paints are still available........:angel:

 

[Muggins]

120 has rather complicated spooling and a backing paper with little to no other applications - issues with the backing paper (like chemical fogging of the film or poor opacity) already are occurring among the smaller makers, and the last automatic 127 spooling machine was scrapped years ago (all 127 available in the last years was hand spooled by one blind staff member at Fotokemika).

Funnily enough, I logged on to say "What about 127?" I have some deliciously weird 127 cameras, and I'm really hoping that they're not going to be relegated to the shelf when my last rolls go.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that in the UK this chap is selling 120 on resized spools for 620 users?
http://www.photosupplies.co.uk/shop.php?category=620+Film&shopid=02111201

Spoilt my first roll by not being careful enough tensioning it, so looking forward to testing the second one.

Adrian

 

[Bill Clark]

How many medium format cameras are still being used for film?

How many 35mm cameras are still being used for film?

My own sense is that both formats will still be around when, someday, I don't wake up.