Photography

Still Photography 135 Film Format...

 

In 1887 a process was developed to apply photographic emulsion on an inert carbohydrate base making film flexible. This is rather important if you want to make movies... and many did. In 1888 Thomas Edison wrote that he intended to do "for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear".

On 4-September-1888 George Eastman patented the "KODAK" (a Brownie like) camera which induced a certain W.K.L. Dickson (who was at the time working for Edison) to purchase some Kodak film for their moving picture project... the Kinetograph (camera) and the Kinetoscope (viewer) went through a period of patent applications and challenges culminating with patent number 589,168 issued on 31-August-1897 for a device very much different from the one described in previous applications. From early on the width of the film was specified as 35mm.

From the "KODAK" patent number 388,850: "Be it known that I, GEORGE EASTMAN [...] have invented certain new and useful improvements [...] in that class of photographic apparatus known as detective cameras, and said invention consists in the novel and improved form, construction, and arrangement of parts..."

The "KODAK" was pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and sold for around twenty-five dollars. The camera and exposed film was returned to the Kodak factory in New York (together with ten dollars) where the film was developed, prints were made, new photographic film was reloaded, and then the camera and prints were returned to the customer... not sure where the negatives ended up ;-).

In the mean time Dickson experimented with 18mm stock and then just sliced Kodak's 70mm wide roll film in half lengthwise and had the resulting 35mm film stock perforated on both edges. The hand cranked device which used sprockets and a frame rate of about 16 images per second was introduced to the public on 20-May-1891... 35mm film was now ready, but not yet a still camera roll film format.

Folding cameras dominated camera design from 1900 to 1945 and typical of that period was the "Folding Pocket Kodak No. 1" made from 1897-1898 by Eastman Kodak Co. which used the 105 roll film format (established in 1897)... In 1901 the 120 roll film format, was created using the same 60.96mm stock as the 105 format but with a different roll flange sizes. BTW, 120 roll fill is still with us today as the second most popular roll film format...



Description: Die erste Kamera, die Ur-Leica
Date: 1914 - Author: Leica
Source: Leica Microsystems (früher Ernst-Leitz)
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license.
In 1913 Oskar Barnack built his prototype 35mm still camera (Ur-Leica) but held off production until the 1920s... and while the Leica camera may have been at least partially responsible for promoting the 35mm format, there were others... in 1908 there was a patent by Leo, Audobard and Baradat in England, and it's generally accepted that the first 35mm camera to be mass produced was the Homeos stereo camera (1913-1920). However, even though the Homeos was using 35mm film stock, it used an 18x24mm format. The first production camera to take 24x36mm exposures seems to be the Simplex, introduced in 1914, that could capture 800 half-frame or 400 full-frame exposures on a 15.2 meter (50 ft) roll. Obviously the 135 cartridge was not yet in use and hand development would have been a challenge ;-). By comparison a modern 36 exposure roll of 35mm film is about 165cm long or approximately equal to the width of the square depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of Vitruvian Man.

In addition to Leica, the major early players using 35mm film were Contax (introduced in 1932) and Kodak with the Retina I in 1934. The latter introduced the 135 cartridge that is used in modern 35mm film cameras. The 1936 Canon 35mm rangefinder was an update of a Kwanon prototype from 1933.
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Description: Kodak Retina Typ 117, 1934
Date: 24-August-2013
Source & Author: Dnalor 01 at Wikimedia Commons
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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Another technical development that is critical to this story is the enlarger... prior to the general use of enlargers the "contact print" was the norm... and thus there was a practical necessity to use larger film formats. Suddenly it became possible to conveniently expose small images and print large... According to "The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes" by William Crawford (1st edition 1979) the first gelatin-coated silver bromide printing paper was released in 1873 and by 1886 chemically developed papers were being produced. I understand (but have not confirmed) that the modern upright enlarger was introduced around 1921.

On a parallel track "standards" for film were formalizing... Kodak played a large part in both defining roll film formats for still cameras and/or documenting them... The below list shows a few of the still photography (roll) film formats and possible image sizes common to that format:

101: 1895-1956 - 89 x 89mm
105: 1897-1949 - 57.15 x 82.55mm - like 120 film with a different flange size
120: 1901-present - 60mm x various - 60.96mm un-perforated, paper-backed
35: 1916-1933 - 31.7 x 44.45mm image on 35mm un-perforated stock
127: 1912-Present - 41.3mm × various - 46mm stock
135: 1934-present - 24 x 36mm image - 35mm stock, double perforated, cartridge
110: 1972-2009 - 13 × 17mm - 16mm stock, Pocket Instamatic cartridge
240: 1996-2011 - 30.2 × 16.7mm - APS cartridge

Full circle... some still cameras use 70mm film, usually via specially designed interchangeable backs, for example the Mamiya RB67. As a default the Mamiya RB67 uses 120/220 format film which is based on 60.96 mm stock.

The 24x36 still photography film format and popular usage is less than 100 years old, medium format (6x4.5/6/7/9cm) almost 120 years, and large format even older. There are plus and minus points for each format, fortunately it's not an either/or...

Thanks for reading,
Casey