Lesson 15 : Processing of Film in Conventional Photography
Physical Characteristics
Format Format is simply the film size. Film ranges from miniature (110, Minox 8mm), to small (35mm), medium (6 x 6cm to 6 x 9cm), and large (4 x 5in to 16 x 20in and larger). Film formats are synonymous with camera formats.
Packaging Film comes in two basic forms, roll and sheet. Roll films are available up to medium format sizes, and sheets generally from 4 x 5in up.Professional outlets offer film in bulk packs (5-10 rolls or more) at discount, guaranteeing that it is all from the same manufacturing batch to insure consistency. Also available is bulk rolls, 50 or 100 meters of film which can be loaded on cassettes by hand. While very inexpensive, bulk film is subject to scratches and other handling errors (not the least of which is reusing cassettes too much— they’ll leak when they get old).
A small note. When buying roll film, get 24 exposure rolls rather than 36, if they are available. Those extra 12 exposures seem to take forever to use up, and you can only get 7 strips of 5 in standard binder-sized negative sleeves.
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