[HN Gopher] More than one hundred years of Film Sizes
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More than one hundred years of Film Sizes
Author : exvi
Score : 82 points
Date : 2026-01-11 08:22 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wichm.home.xs4all.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (wichm.home.xs4all.nl)
| Lammy wrote:
| I think this is the earliest-born person I've ever seen have a
| personal website like this -- 1929 !
| https://wichm.home.xs4all.nl/amsterdam1.html
|
| R.I.P. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rogge
|
| I went ahead and mirrored this entire site, and his YouTube
| channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelRogge
| croisillon wrote:
| i went down this rabbit hole and in fact Tim Berners Lee is/was
| not old (b. 1955), though one can argue George HW Bush (b.
| 1924) had the White House website running he evidently didn't
| have a personal one
|
| and then there is Olive Riley (b. 1899)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Riley
| dcminter wrote:
| I'd imagine there are a good few, but that for a lot of them
| their websites expired when the owner did. For example my Dad's
| is gone now and he was only a bit younger. Wayback machine
| likely has a lot of them in its index if you can find them.
| MORPHOICES wrote:
| As I was looking at various film formats, I was reminded of how
| messy standards are. ~
|
| There are dozens of formats with slightly different sizes and
| long tails that never fully disappear.
|
| There is almost no rhyme or reason to it and a lot of it feels
| like it's just been passed down.
|
| After a while, a format can no longer be considered optional.
| Once again, I see the same pattern with software and I was
| curious how others view the same phenomenon.
|
| Which standards survived due to inertia? Which lost better
| alternatives? Where was the emphasis on compatibility over
| design?
| guax wrote:
| "Where was the emphasis on compatibility over design"
|
| Im confused by this line, standards are meant to promote
| compatibility, not design. They're a way to, well...
| standardise processes and things. Its almost a given that
| you'll have to compromise on design to be able to include
| enough variance to appease the majority of use cases. It is
| also desirable, I think, of a standard to not give in to edge
| cases and niche uses and stay as simple as it can to the
| general use. There will be other niche standards for those and
| that is a good thing.
|
| Standards survive and die for the same reason they're created,
| they make things cheaper, faster and easier. Once they fail at
| those, they give in to newer entrants. Physical standards can
| also make things safer, but safety must be enforced as people
| often are bad at judging risk and prefer the other features to
| a fault.
| justincormack wrote:
| Film is manufactured on huge rolls, and is cut down to
| different sizes and formats, so its not really that expensive
| on the manufacturing side to support a lot of formats. From the
| buy side, cameras are expensive, and almost all cameras only
| support one format. The big change came with film developing
| labs on teh high street, as when development was at home it was
| fairly manual, but once it was automated the machines were
| designed for fewer formats (for a long time 35mm, and often
| medium format). But even then, the process doesnt change per
| format and the chemicals are the same, so supporting variation
| is relatively cheap.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the early days there were as many formats as there were
| camera backs because the exposure was at the size of the
| print. These were positives that were developed directly
| rather than that they went through an intermediate step of a
| negative and subsequent enlargement.
| justincormack wrote:
| The glass plate sizes were relatively well standardised, eg
| whole plate, half plate quarter plate, although other
| countries had metric and imperial versions. Before the
| plates were mass produced they may have varied more.
| jacquesm wrote:
| My dad collected old cameras, he had 100's, and the
| number of formats in use was not all that much smaller
| than the number of cameras, to the point that we had to
| cut glass or paper quite often. We also sensitized our
| own plates and developed metal plates (which is insanely
| dangerous).
| drmpeg wrote:
| VistaVision has made a comeback with "The Brutalist", "One
| Battle After Another" and "Bugonia".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaVision
| kudeyar wrote:
| IKR. This is why i'm always angry at little kids for making a
| hundred mistakes. why can't they see like i can see? why am i
| the only one in here that can see?!?!?!
| keiferski wrote:
| It's amazing to think that film / moving images as an art form is
| only a little over a century old. Painting, sculpture, drawing,
| etc. are orders of magnitude older.
|
| It also makes me wonder what the future of the form will be.
| Historically speaking we're still at the very beginning of it.
| justincormack wrote:
| The oldest surviving photograph is 200 years old this year
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gra...
| lordwiz wrote:
| Film formats still rule, but I'm curious what comes next. What
| I'm seeing in the mainstream is large-format 65 mm / IMAX 70 mm
| film, which feels like a premium big-screen experience, almost
| too premium to access nearby.
| greekrich92 wrote:
| One Battle After Another was shot and released on VistaVision.
| Sideways 35mm basically.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaVision
| mmcwilliams wrote:
| VistaVision is being used more often as a cheaper way to get
| to IMAX or 70mm projections sizes. The gear and filmstock is
| less expensive for production and you can laser out to the
| other formats at roughly the same resolution you capture at.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm sure there are still some stubborn old directors shooting
| movies on film but aren't most shot digitally today? And even
| those shot on film are surely immediately scanned so post
| processing can be done digitally? Can't imagine anyone is still
| sitting with razor blades and splicing tape putting scenes
| together.
| fallinditch wrote:
| It's great to see Vistavision making a comeback, a perfect format
| IMHO, exemplified by Hitchcock's Vertigo -
| https://youtu.be/95o-QM-lz8g
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(page generated 2026-01-11 23:01 UTC)