Would a "Super 135 format" have been successful?

Theo Sulphate · Jul 18, 2019

In 1965 Kodak improved the 8mm ciné format by introducing Super 8, which had narrower sprocket holes and a larger image area. However, the 135 format ("35mm") never had a similar improvement in image size. In fact, just the opposite happened with 126, 110, disc, and then APS.

The 35mm width has been used in several obsolete formats which did offer more image area than the 24x36mm of 135:

35 - 32x44mm, unperforated, paper-backed?
828 - 28x40mm, 1 sprocket, paper-backed

It seems to me that there easily could have been a "Super 135" format using the same film we have now, but consisting of narrow sprocket holes and a larger image area such as 28x42mm - the same aspect ratio as the current 135 format, but with 36% more area. This could've boosted film sales plus sales of new cameras and lenses and it would've been better than 135 for everyone.

Also consider this Super 135 as being in a drop-in cassette, like 126, but with a pressure plate and other modifications to ensure film flatness and proper registration.

Do you think this would've been successful?

narsuitus · Jul 18, 2019

Based on what I remember of the 1960s, the big push was to find a inexpensive film substitute for silver. A "super 35" format would have worked only if the film industry had found that substitute.

guangong · Jul 18, 2019

No! Just too many standard 35 mm cameras already in existence. Most likely the simplified loading innovations failed just because they were oriented towards those who were befuddled when loading a typical camera. These would be folks who placed roll in camera at Christmas and used this roll throughout the year to take a snapshot or two at birthdays, etc., so not a big market. While most 16mm movie cameras use sprockets on one edge, 35 mm film may be too wide to be trouble free with sprockets only on one side, even in a still camera.
With time, we saw the demise of all roll film collapse into 35 mm and 120. All others, such as 127, 110, Minolta 16 and Minox, must be cut at home or from specialized dealers who do the slitting.
Still, you raised an interesting query. Wonder what camera engineers have to say.

RalphLambrecht · Jul 18, 2019

Theo Sulphate said:
In 1965 Kodak improved the 8mm ciné format by introducing Super 8, which had narrower sprocket holes and a larger image area. However, the 135 format ("35mm") never had a similar improvement in image size. In fact, just the opposite happened with 126, 110, disc, and then APS.

The 35mm width has been used in several obsolete formats which did offer more image area than the 24x36mm of 135:

35 - 32x44mm, unperforated, paper-backed?
828 - 28x40mm, 1 sprocket, paper-backed

It seems to me that there easily could have been a "Super 135" format using the same film we have now, but consisting of narrow sprocket holes and a larger image area such as 28x42mm - the same aspect ratio as the current 135 format, but with 36% more area. This could've boosted film sales plus sales of new cameras and lenses and it would've been better than 135 for everyone.

Also consider this Super 135 as being in a drop-in cassette, like 126, but with a pressure plate and other modifications to ensure film flatness and proper registration.

Do you think this would've been successful?

why not?sounds interesting even now;a jump from 35 to MF is a huge jump in imagequality. super135 would offer sufficient improvement to be of interest but 6x4.5 is very similar and even better.

Eric Rose · Jul 18, 2019

Isn't that what we call the 645 format? I always considered it just a bit better than 35mm, but not enough to really keep my attention. I either shot 35mm or 120. The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

RalphLambrecht · Jul 18, 2019

Eric Rose said:
Isn't that what we call the 645 format? I always considered it just a bit better than 35mm, but not enough to really keep my attention. I either shot 35mm or 120. The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

+1

markbau · Jul 18, 2019

Eric Rose said:
Isn't that what we call the 645 format? I always considered it just a bit better than 35mm, but not enough to really keep my attention. I either shot 35mm or 120. The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

The great silver price spike was cited as the reason Kodak went to work creating emulsions with less silver which resulted in TMax films according to a Kodak sales rep I talked to in Denver many years ago. The timeline certainly fits as TMax came out in t1986.

Paul Howell · Jul 18, 2019

4X4 or was the super 35mm, 4X4 slides could fit in a standard slide projector, and worked in most 35mm enlargers. 645 is a 120 format, and when cropped full frame 6X6 becomes 645.

bernard_L · Jul 18, 2019

I have my doubts. One 135 film 35mm(width) x 38mm(frame spacing) x40(#frames+leader) = 0.05m2 approx 0.5ftsq.
Quoting PE https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/silver-content-of-bw-film-in-g-cm2.80776/#post-1102195
"Common B&W films fall in the range of 150 - 300 mg / ft sq", say 200mg/ftsq
so we are looking at 0.10g for one 135 film. Current market price is US$0.50/g ==> 0.05$ worth of silver in one 135 film.

And I can (almost) hear the PR/Marketing folks at EK or Ilford stating "price of silver just went up by 20%, therefore we have to raise our end-customer price by 20%.

Eric Rose · Jul 18, 2019

Paul Howell said:
4X4 or was the super 35mm, 4X4 slides could fit in a standard slide projector, and worked in most 35mm enlargers. 645 is a 120 format, and when cropped full frame 6X6 becomes 645.

My dad shot some "Super 35" in his Rolleiflex. And yes I knew 645 was derived from 120, just never gave it the credence to be considered 120 even though it used the film format. To me 120 is 6x6 and up on that film format.

narsuitus · Jul 18, 2019

Eric Rose said:
The hoarding of silver started in the 70's by the Hunt brothers.

Yes, there was a hording of silver that started in the 1970s by the Hunt brothers.

However, due to dwindling silver supplies, in the 1960s, the U.S. government began reducing the silver content of U.S. coins from 90% to 40% to 0%.

Agulliver · Jul 18, 2019

I have my doubts that it would have been successful. 135 was considered "miniature" when it was introduced but by the mid 60s it was the norm for most "joe Average" types. The development routes for higher quality images were to move to medium format (and remember 127 was viable then)...or for simpler film/camera systems (126 catered for this) or for cheaper film (see half frame and 110). A super 35 would have, at best, been very much a niche market. And as 35mm film improved, anything 135 could do by the 70s would have matched "super 135" in the 60s.

Cholentpot · Jul 18, 2019

The 6x4.5 hating fiends are here! Hide the gear!

My M645 gives me more shots on a roll of 120 therefore it gets good use. Negatives are much larger than 35mm and I get the awesome MF depth of field. No complaints from me.

Patrick Robert James · Jul 18, 2019

Some cameras have used more than the typical 36mm. Hassy X-Pan for example and some spin type panorama cameras. Didn't the instamatic use 35mm film but with only one sprocket side? Don't know how big those frames were. Even so, you can't really squeeze much more space out of 35mm film. The sprockets are huge on 8mm film compared to the image size. Not so with 35.

voceumana · Jul 18, 2019

The Instamatic 126 film was the same width as 35mm, but the image was a square, so about 24x24 mm; one sprocket per frame. Not a bad format, but Kodak didn't include a pressure plate in the cartridge, so it didn't achieve all the might have been possible in the format.

Kodak seemed to drive all formats to a smaller film area than previous formats during the last part of the 20th century, depending upon improvements for gain in image quality rather than by using more surface area--obviously a cost savings for the manufacturer. First 126, then 110, then disc, and finally Advantix--at least that was somewhat of an increase over 110 and disc.

I would have thought a super 135 film might have found a market. One of the problems with 127 film was the spool was so small in diameter that the film could take on a definite curl and it was difficult (in some cameras) to get a tight wind. Same film width with a 120 diameter spool and longer lengths might have competed with 35mm.

Huss · Jul 18, 2019

It seems like a lot of work - larger film gate, larger lens mount, new lenses (to make sure they cover the increased area w/o excessive vignetting) when 645 already exists and is much larger than 35mm.

Sirius Glass · Jul 18, 2019

markbau said:
The great silver price spike was cited as the reason Kodak went to work creating emulsions with less silver which resulted in TMax films according to a Kodak sales rep I talked to in Denver many years ago. The timeline certainly fits as TMax came out in t1986.

Kodak also introduced smaller formats to save silver.

Paul Howell · Jul 18, 2019

voceumana said:
The Instamatic 126 film was the same width as 35mm, but the image was a square, so about 24x24 mm; one sprocket per frame. Not a bad format, but Kodak didn't include a pressure plate in the cartridge, so it didn't achieve all the might have been possible in the format.

My wife had an Instamatic with interchangeable lens , think it was called the Instamatic Reflex or maybe Retina Instamatic, she had 3 lens, quite good lens, but in the heat of the summer the cartridge was prone to warping. She really liked the ease of loading. I think the largest print I ever made for her was a 11X14, she shot a lot of color. At this point don't even know who can print from a 126 negative. I no longer have a negative carrier, well I do have masking 35 to 6X6 so I could use my Opemus III. I still have the negative carrier for 4X4, and still have pages of negatives to print. I had a baby Yashica TLR.

summicron1 · Jul 18, 2019

It was called 828 -- same width but used more of the film area because it only had a single perf along one edge, paper roll back film, and was successful for quite a long time -- several decades at least.

Theo Sulphate · Jul 18, 2019

Agulliver said:
I have my doubts that it would have been successful. 135 was considered "miniature" when it was introduced but by the mid 60s it was the norm for most "joe Average" types. The development routes for higher quality images were to move to medium format (and remember 127 was viable then)...or for simpler film/camera systems (126 catered for this) or for cheaper film (see half frame and 110). A super 35 would have, at best, been very much a niche market. And as 35mm film improved, anything 135 could do by the 70s would have matched "super 135" in the 60s.

I suppose you're right. My thoughts were that a Super 135 would replace the regular 135 entirely, especially if it had been introduced in 1965 like Super 8.

Ko.Fe. · Jul 18, 2019

I'm not 1965 film sales witness, but these days changing some holes size or whatever is not going to change anything.
Film doesn't meet 21 century crowds, mass mentality. This is why no quality, crappy instax is more alive than film these days.
They increased the size of it at some point and called it wide, instead of super. It didn't sparked much in demand and I can't recall many new cameras. Just another MIC Lomo .

ic-racer · Jul 18, 2019

New analog film formats have been popular lately. In the last few years we have seen film and cameras in these new formats 46 mm × 62 mm, 99 mm × 62 mm and 62 mm × 62 mm. In fact the 62 mm × 62 mm was just introduced in 2017!

I think super 35 would be great. I use super 16 (quarter frame) cameras and the image quality is better than conventional 2 perforation 16mm. In fact the image on a 2 perforation 16mm still camera is not much bigger than a Minox frame!

MattKing · Jul 18, 2019

As film formats got smaller, so could cameras and photo-finishing.
Most people didn't want bigger film, they wanted easier to use film.
And the photofinishers wanted easier to handle film.
828 slides are wonderful, and 645 slides are fantastic.
The format I would like to see is super 4/3 - 24mm x 32mm.

StepheKoontz · Jul 18, 2019

I remember my parents loved a little 110 minolta they had, Dad could put it in his shirt pocket on trips. In small prints, they didn't seem to notice the quality loss.

MattKing · Jul 18, 2019

The 110 Kodachrome slides that I inherited from my father are also impressive.

Would a "Super 135 format" have been successful?

Theo Sulphate

narsuitus

guangong

RalphLambrecht

Eric Rose

RalphLambrecht

markbau

Paul Howell

bernard_L

Eric Rose

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voceumana

Huss

Sirius Glass

Paul Howell

summicron1

Theo Sulphate

Ko.Fe.

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Would a "Super 135 format" have been successful?

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