Roll film
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rollfilm or roll film is any type of photographic film which is wound on a spool with paper backing, as opposed to film which is wound in a cartridge. Confusingly, rollfilm was originally often referred to as "cartridge" film because of its resemblance to a shotgun cartridge. The opaque backing paper allows rollfilm to be loaded in daylight and 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 rollfilm is usually loaded on one side of the camera and pulled across to an identical takeup spool on the other side of the shutter as pictures are taken. When the roll is fully exposed, the takeup spool is removed for processing and the spool on which the film was originally wound becomes the takeup spool for the next loading.
Rollfilm was invented by George Eastman and first used in his Kodak box camera of 1888. Rollfilm remained the format of choice for inexpensive snapshot cameras until the 1950s, the most common sizes being 127 and 828 for small format cameras and 120 and 116 for medium format cameras. The use of rollfilm in snapshot cameras was largely wiped out by the more convenient 135 and 126 cartridges, but 120 film is still commonly used in medium format cameras.
220 rollfims are double as long as the 120 rolls but have no backing paper. 120 rollfilms are good for 12 (6x6) pictures and the 220 rollfilms for 24 (6X6) pictures.
