Roll film or rollfilm is any type of spool-wound

photographic film Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin photographic emulsion, emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of th ...

protected from white light exposure by a paper backing. The term originated in contrast to

sheet film Sheet film is large format and medium format photographic film supplied on individual sheets of acetate or polyester film base rather than rolls. Sheet film was initially supplied as an alternative to glass plates. The most popular size measures ...

. Confusingly, roll film was originally often referred to as "cartridge" film because of its resemblance to a

shotgun A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...

cartridge. The opaque backing paper allows roll film to be loaded in daylight. It is typically printed with frame number markings which can be viewed through a small red window at the rear of the camera. A spool of roll film is usually loaded on one side of the camera and pulled across to an identical take up spool on the other side of the shutter as exposures are made. When the roll is fully exposed, the take up spool is removed for processing and the empty spool on which the film was originally wound is moved to the other side, becoming the take up spool for the next roll of film.

History

In 1881 a farmer in Cambria, Wisconsin, Peter Houston, invented the first roll film camera. His younger brother David, filed the patents for various components of Peter's camera. David Henderson Houston (born June 14, 1841; died May 6, 1906), originally from Cambria, Wisconsin, patented the first holders for flexible roll film.
/ref> Houston moved to Hunter,_North_Dakota, Hunter in

Dakota Territory The Territory of Dakota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1861, until November 2, 1889, when the final extent of the reduced territory was split and admitted to the Union as the states of No ...

in 1880. He was issued an 1881 patent for a roll film holder which he licensed to

George Eastman George Eastman (July 12, 1854March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Kodak, Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the ...

(it was used in Eastman's

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

1888

box camera A box camera is a simple type of camera, the most common form being a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. They were sold in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lenses are often singl ...

). Houston sold the patent (and an 1886 revision) outright to Eastman for $5000 in 1889. Houston continued developing the camera, creating 21 patents for cameras or camera parts between 1881 and 1902.Hammer, 1940, pp.55ff. In 1912 his estate transferred the remainder of his patents to Eastman. Rollfilm Ilford FP4 HP5 und Fuji Velvia Astia Provia

Rollfilm Ilford FP4 HP5 und Fuji Velvia Astia Provia

The most popular roll film format is

120 film 120 is a film format for still photography introduced by Kodak for their '' Brownie No. 2'' in 1901. It was originally intended for amateur photography but was later superseded in this role by 135 film. 120 film survives to this day as the only ...

, which is used in most

medium format Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...

cameras and roll film magazines for

large-format Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame o ...

cameras. Until the 1950s, 120 roll film was, with the smaller 127 film, also used in the simplest of box cameras and other

snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...

cameras. The use of roll film in consumer cameras was largely superseded by

135 135 may refer to: * 135 (number) * AD 135 * 135 BC * 135 film, better known as 35 mm film, is a format of photographic film used for still photography *135 (New Jersey bus) 135 may refer to: * 135 (number) * AD 135 * 135 BC * 135 film, better know ...

and 126 cartridges, but 120 and 220 (double length) film are still commonly used in medium format cameras.

Automatic film speed sensing

In 1998,

Fujifilm , trading as Fujifilm, or simply Fuji, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, operating in the realms of photography, optics, office and medical electronics, biotechnology, and chemicals. The offerings from th ...

introduced a film identification system for 120 and 220 format roll film called ''

Barcode System DX (Digital indeX) encoding is an ANSI and I3A standard, originally introduced by Kodak in March 1983, for marking 135 and APS photographic film and film cartridges. It consists of several parts, a latent image DX film edge barcode on the film be ...

'' (with logo ", , , B"). The

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...

encoding the film format and length as well as the

film speed Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relations ...

and type is located on the sticker between the emulsion carrying film and the backing paper. This 13-bit barcode is optically scanned by newer

cameras like the Fujifilm GA645i Professional, GA645Wi Professional, GA645Zi Professional, GX645AF Professional, GX680III Professional, GX680IIIS Professional,

Hasselblad H1 Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist ...

, H2, H2F and H3D Model I with HM 16-32 as well as by the

Contax 645 AF Contax (stylised as CONTAX in the Kyocera era) began as a German camera model in the Zeiss Ikon line in 1932, and later became a brand name. The early cameras were among the finest in the world, typically featuring high quality Zeiss interchan ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roll Film Film formats Photography equipment

History

Automatic film speed sensing

See also

References