What are 4x5 films?

D

dimitriroleda

Member
Local time
4:30 AM
Joined
Jun 2, 2008
Messages
23
I'm gonna be a total noob and ask this question, simply because I couldn't find the "clear" answer anywhere :D

What are the 4x5 films, and how are they different from the 135 & 120's? How are they used?

Thanks and I hope to hear from you guys soon!

Regards,
Dimitri Roleda
 
The whole thing's a mess isn't it? I mean 35mm film is actually 24mm x 36mm and also known as 135 (why?). 120 film is 6cm x 6cm (right?), so why the 120? Then 5 x 4 is in inches!!
 
wintoid said:
The whole thing's a mess isn't it? I mean 35mm film is actually 24mm x 36mm and also known as 135 (why?). 120 film is 6cm x 6cm (right?), so why the 120? Then 5 x 4 is in inches!!
Click to expand...

probably because sheet film is right one (full frame), so it even has meaningful naming ;)

well, 135 is 35mm wide. Don't know explanation for 120.
 
wintoid said:
I mean 35mm film is actually 24mm x 36mm and also known as 135 (why?). 120 film is 6cm x 6cm (right?), so why the 120?
Click to expand...
Those numbers (120 etc.) were Kodak product codes for roll film. There were a lot of different roll film formats, the most well-known being 120, and some other well-known ones being 122, 126, 127 and 620. The 6xx films were usually 1xx films with a different spool. An overview of some of them is here.

The clou about 135 was not the film format (which is a very old format for movie film), but the canister. Kodak later had this canister standardized in ISO 1007. It's called 35mm film because it is in fact 35mm wide; 24x36mm is the format of the picture, not the film, and the picture fits on the film sideways to make room for the perforation.

Kodak later reused some of the codes, such as 110, which originally was a 4x5 inch roll film. In 1972, they reassigned this number, which was by then referring to an utterly obsolete film, to their newly developed pocket camera cassette which we now refer to as the 110 cassette.

Philipp
 
As much as I know 135, 120, 127, 110, 126 were simply codenumbers for the formats by Kodak. There were for example 620 films the same size as 120 but with thinner spools which makes using cameras of that format a bit tricky

Philipp beat me!
 
Sheet film sold in inches is actually slightly smaller on each side than the nominal size. If you try to cut 8x10" film into quarters, you'll get four sheets about 1/32" larger on each dimension than nominally 4x5" film that won't fit 4x5" filmholders. The original glass plates were the actual size, but then metal sheaths were used to adapt plateholders for film. The film had to be slightly smaller to make room for the metal sheaths, and the sizes have remained that way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom