120mm film

Michel Hardy-Vallée · May 18, 2011

Yes, 120mm film, the medium format that is so bad-ass it's twice as big as 60mm wide 120 !

"120mm" is my favorite misnomer in the world of photography. You can see it on the shelves of photo store, in the post of both newb and pro photographers, in the catalogs of laboratories, and I'm sure Neil Armstrong exposed a few rolls of 120mm in his Hasselblad camera on the moon!

Every month or so, I patiently train a lab clerk at my local photo store (they rotate a lot, obviously) in the long forgotten lore that pictures on 120 film really are 6 cm wide, not 120mm wide, and that 120 really is a product code.

Surprisingly, very few people say "220mm" but it happens every once in a while you will see it in product list (see these guys, for example: http://www.lozeau.com/services/comptoir-finition-laboratoire/films-diapos/developpement-120220/ or those guys: http://www.borealislab.qc.ca/pdf/liste_de_prix_01.pdf) because the same clerk who did 120mm was told to add "220".

"120mm film" is a testament to the power of words: stronger than truth, easier to remember than reality, more coherent than the external world, and more meaningful than the original.

So what's your favourite misconception in the world of photography?

perkeleellinen · May 18, 2011

My favourite is 'lense'

holmburgers · May 18, 2011

Whenever you mention infrared film to someone not versed in it, they always assume that means "heat seeing", and then they're disappointed by what it really means..

Or worse yet, that people think they went back and "colorized" all that Kodachrome footage from WWII.

Joe O'Brien · May 18, 2011

Me: "I like photography too!"
Anon: "What do you shoot with?"
Me: "Film, howabout you?"
Anon: "Oh! So you, like, make movies then?"

Or my other favorite response "They still make film?"

Joe O'Brien · May 18, 2011

Oh, and a darkroom is the same as a clean room.

I don't know about anyone else, but the darkroom I work in sure as hell isn't a clean room!

Sirius Glass · May 18, 2011

Not photography but the media, journalist, news, television and movies: "the eternally dark side of the moon" and "knowledgeable journalist".

Jeff Kubach · May 18, 2011

What bothers me when they spell Canon, Cannon.

Jeff

polyglot · May 18, 2011

Oh man, I was gonna jump in this thread to have a whinge that 120 film is not 120mm only to find that I was being baited

Another one that bugs me (much less common than "120mm") is referring to hypo clearing agent (HCA) as merely "hypo", which is actually fixer, which is what HCA is meant to get rid of!

brucemuir · May 18, 2011

Where does the term "120" come from?

Sirius Glass · May 18, 2011

brucemuir said:
Where does the term "120" come from?

The first system Kodak had for names for film sizes was confusing and out of hand. So Kodak started the numbering over again starting at 100. The first in the list was 101, then 102, ... in order 2 1/4" wide film was 120.

There were exceptions since 35mm film was well known in the movie industry, Kodak jumped ahead and numbered it 135.

620 film was the same width as 120 with a narrower spool so that was assigned 620.

There are several others which were numbered out of sequence using 6xx and 8xx. There was some reason to label Instamatic film as 126, but I cannot remember why.

This history is here:
http://www.nwmangum.com/Kodak/FilmHist.html

A cross reference of emulsion type is here FWIW:
http://www.taphilo.com/Photo/kodakfilmnumxref.shtml

Steve

tomalophicon · May 18, 2011

I really hate tog, i.e when people refer to a photographer.

John Koehrer · May 18, 2011

'lux, 'cron for Summilux and Summicron. Guess it make some of the Leica folks feel like they're part of the in crowd.

Thomas Bertilsson · May 18, 2011

perkeleellinen said:
My favourite is 'lense'

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/lens

It may not be as incorrect as you think, as it is merely a variant of 'lens'.

OzJohn · May 18, 2011

There used to be an Australian photo company called Hanimex (it was known in other countries too). Many was the person who called it HAMinex but I've even heard it pronounced as "ham an' eggs". I know the Poms reckon that Aussies (and Yanks) murder the English language but that one even offends my ear! OxJohn

Shawn Rahman · May 18, 2011

perkeleellinen said:
My favourite is 'lense'

Not much worse than "glass", however.

perkeleellinen · May 19, 2011

I've actually got a whole list of photo jargon which irks me:

Burning a roll of film
Souping a roll of film
'bokeh'
The Big Auction Site
Fast Glass (as Shawn said, above)
Lense (even though as Thomas points out it is a variant)
'nice capture'
Xpro

tomalophicon · May 19, 2011

perkeleellinen said:
I've actually got a whole list of photo jargon which irks me:

Burning a roll of film
Souping a roll of film
'bokeh'
The Big Auction Site
Fast Glass (as Shawn said, above)
Lense (even though as Thomas points out it is a variant)
'nice capture'
Xpro

Is Xpro like cross-processing, only more hip?

Steve Smith · May 19, 2011

polyglot said:
Oh man, I was gonna jump in this thread to have a whinge that 120 film is not 120mm only to find that I was being baited

Me too!

Steve.

Steve Smith · May 19, 2011

Sirius Glass said:
620 film was the same width as 120 with a narrower spool so that was assigned 620

This was a cunning plan by Kodak to force people to use Kodak film in Kodak cameras as the other manufacturers' 120 film would not fit.

Unfortunately for Kodak, the other other film manufacturers were equally cunning and started making 620 film as well.

Steve.

sandermarijn · May 19, 2011

John Koehrer said:
'lux, 'cron for Summilux and Summicron. Guess it make some of the Leica folks feel like they're part of the in crowd.

The 'rit on my Minilux is a great lense.

Just a pity that 'rits are so slow and affordable.

They are fast focussing though, and they do well with fast film.

polyglot · May 19, 2011

perkeleellinen said:
I've actually got a whole list of photo jargon which irks me:

Burning a roll of film
Souping a roll of film
'bokeh'
The Big Auction Site
Fast Glass (as Shawn said, above)
Lense (even though as Thomas points out it is a variant)
'nice capture'
Xpro

Sure, but none of them are really wrong as such, they're just slang or euphemism. I use at least four of them regularly (come on, bokeh is the japanese word for blur; I don't see the problem with its use to describe the quality of out-of-focus areas in an image) !

kraker · May 19, 2011

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
"120mm" is my favorite misnomer in the world of photography. (...) Surprisingly, very few people say "220mm" but it happens every once in a while you will see it in product list

Next thing you know they'll be adding 110mm film to the list, which is just "a bit" smaller than 120mm and 220mm...

Jeff Kubach said:
What bothers me when they spell Canon, Cannon.

Ditto when Rollei is misspelled Rollie, and Harman (of Ilford fame) Harmon.

sandermarijn · May 19, 2011

kraker said:
Ditto when Rollei is misspelled Rollie, and Harman (of Ilford fame) Harmon.

I've always thought that people saying "Rollie" meant to express affection. Maybe some actually do, while most are just bad typists.

Diapositivo · May 19, 2011

I dislike abbreviations in general, I suppose they are just a "smart" way not to check orthography. People write "silo" because they have no idea where they would put the "h" in silhouette, "tog" is a way to resolve the dilemma photographer or fotografer, photografer, fotographer.

The thing that disturbs me more is all the "it's" instead of "its", "he's" instead of "his" (the list could go on) because that shows a basic ignorance of basic grammar rules of the language. You find it now in technical documentation as well. That's sad to say the least*.

Also "your" instead of "you are", "their" instead of "they are", "whose" instead of "who's" or "who's" instead of "whose" can be mentioned. One has to read the sentences twice to figure where the catch is

And another thing is all the commas, dots, semicolons which are not followed by a space. When one writes a sentence without leaving a space after the comma,the text is much more difficult to read fast,and reading a forum becomes a pain,so much so that sometimes I immediately skip the text. Spaces are free, use them generously

* It's not difficult to understand.
It's = a contraction of "it is".
Its = of it, related to it.

If you can substitute it's with "it is" then you write it "it's".
If you cannot substitute it's with "it is" then it's "its".

One cannot say "I loved the camera but not it is price". You say "I loved the camera but not its price".

And by the same token "her's" (that doesn't exists at all) is different from "hers", "his" is different from "he's".
The girl brought her book. I brought my book, she brought hers.
Never: the girl brought her's book. Her's makes no sense and does not exists in English. Your's does not exists in English as well. If it's yours, it's yours without apostrophe.

He's just arrived with his car. She's just arrived with her car. They're just arrived with their car. It's their car, not yours. You're not the owner of this car, because it's theirs.

Spend half an hour with your grammar, it's your friend

(I'm not targeting anybody in particular, just being my usual pedantic )

PS Being a foreigner I have a grammatical license to kill, so now don't shoot at me in retaliation

Thomas Bertilsson · May 19, 2011

Here are some that completely irritate me:

Blown highlights. What the hell does that really mean? They exploded? Somebody breathed on them?
Compo - composition, of course. Yuck.
Dorff - Deardorff, please.
Blad - Hasselblad, please.
Shooting - What's wrong with photographing? Or taking pictures?
Capture - Ugh
Bokeh - Please kill me by saying it one more time.
Muddy - Someone describe to me what a 'muddy' print is. Somebody really smear mud on it? Be more creative, please, like 'not sharp', or 'poor contrast'.

What's worse, I think I may have used all of the messed up language above at some point in time.

120mm film

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