Minimum worthwhile format?

<p>I know there are a lot of odd balls who rave about old stuff, I'm one of them - apart from my OM4ti and Rollei 35 I also drive a classic Saab 900 that's nearly 20 years old and has probably cost me at least 2 new cars in repairs over the years. That being said I really can't believe people wasted their time with the ultra small formats that became a fad starting in the 60s inc 110s (a bit later?) and half frames one of which I still have but regret ever buying when ever I see the hundreds of pics I took that could have been so much better in full 35. What were we all thinking about! And don't even mention that terrible disc format. I'm pretty sure at the time, I believed in this new high tech world of picture taking but frankly looking back which is of course always easy to do, I wish they'd never made a format smaller than 35.</p>

<p>IMHO....keep in mind that "for the masses" in the mid 60's forward, camera companies wanted to get photography into the hands of the general public. Remember, color film was'nt the norm until the late 60's as well. Post WW2 photography found us moving from the bakelite brownies with roll film to the 126 cartridge as the norm. The Kodak instamatic with a 126 cartridge was very easy to use, lightweight, reasonable size and most of all....inexpensive. Most of us (my parents) simply wanted snapshots to put in a photo album. Alot of these photos were 4x6 in size and really didn't require alot of resolution (i.e...small negative). The 110 size made "pocket" cameras the rage at the time. 35 mm SLR cameras cost ALOT more than instamatics. A serious photographer bought an SLR because he wanted a higher quality photo and everything that went with that ...(some simply for bragging rights and show LOL) I realize that there were relatively inexpensive 35mm at the time as well, but I think that the end product really somewhat dictated what camera you purchased at the time. I still see alot of parallels to that today....even in the digital world. One can purchase an extremely simple PS digital for under 50 bucks. Facebook, UTube, Email pics (think digital instamatic and electronic photo album) Serious photography..more choices, more $$$) But in the end I agree.....Disc format? What were they thinkin'?<br>

Mark</p>

<p>"I see the hundreds of pics I took that could have been so much better in full 35"</p>

<p>I'm finally cleaning out my abandoned darkroom. As I look through stacks and stacks of prints from medium and large format I find myself thinking the opposite "These photos couldn't have sucked any worse if I'd just used 35mm." ;) </p>

<p>Jerry, you kill me with your Saab 900 quip - So true ! But I miss my '87 Turbo SPG, just not the ever-so heftier drain on the wallet. Unlike Instamatics and Pocket 110s, Saabs weren't designed for the unthinking masses for the most part.<br>

There were plenty of fine examples of smaller-than-135 film formats. Pentax and Minolta made some really good 110 SLRs back in the 70s. A few Classics Forum members can probably chime in with recent sample pics from these cameras. They had excellent optics and made great prints relative to negative size. And the Oly 1/2 frame Pens were no slouches, either.<br>

Remember, back in the olden days, 35mm was "Miniature". A Barnack Leica or Exakta was considered a mini-cam by the day's standard. I'm sure there were plenty of codgers who poo-pooed the "cine" film cameras when they first came out, and for several decades later, too. </p>

 

<p>We do it for fun, so whatever someone finds "fun" is the right camera for them. For me, the smallest film I will shoot is 120 in my 6x9 cameras and 4x4 in my Shen Hao. I'm not even considerng a 35mm.</p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

<p> It was a miniature film that got me hooked! When I was about 12 years old. I watched a man in a dept store, shoot my portrait with a Minox mini. He then developed the film, and produced an 8x10 (stabilized) print from the tiny negative. After that I was hooked on photography.</p>

<p>You are assuming that people chose smaller formats. In reality Kodak jammed these down the public's throats.</p>

<p> The 1960's began with box cameras and 620 film, and ended with 126 film. And the 1970's saw 110, and finally the "disc". Kodak realized that the end result of their cameras and films, only needed to be a 3x5" print. So why waste all the negative (read: silver) space?</p>

<p>If you recall during this time, the infamous "Hunt Bros." tried to take over the silver market. They succeeded in raising the price from $8 an oz., to $50 per oz. Kodak doubled their film prices overnight in reaction to this. And guess what? When silver prices returned to normal, Kodak decided they liked getting money more for their film and papers.</p>

<p>When self loading, point and shoot 35MM cameras became available. The public which had grown used to cartridged film convenience. Now started buying these.And 35MM then became the most popular format.</p>

<p>For the entire 20th century up until the 126 Instamatics in the 1960's. People were able to load roll film cameras. I suppose it is all part of the general dumbing down, that we are accused of.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The smallest format camera I have is 35 mm half-frame (it's a Fed Mikron). The camera isn't that small: some of my full-frame 35 mm cameras are smaller than it. Although it doesn't give complete control over exposure (complete aperture control, but shutter speed is 1/30 or auto), I still find enough 'photography' in it to enjoy using it. I don't find the physical size of the negative a big deal; I've never seen grain as necessarily a problem, for example. What I notice most when using it is the change to a shorter aspect ratio; 4x3 instead of 3x2. I think the cost (and sometimes the availability) of film and processing were probably a big part of the attraction of half-frame for some.<br>

I wouldn't seek out anything much smaller than this, but love of the equipment is part of the fun for me, so if I came across a decent 16 mm camera I might get sucked in.<br>

Clearly, Disc cameras weren't intended for use where photography was the main activity; they were for holiday pictures etc., so it's totally unreasonable of me to find them annoying, but I still do. Not really for the size though. Because the mounting of the film is so odd, the cameras were unusable as soon as it suited Kodak to stop supporting them. Another small camera I have, one of my oldest, is a Zeiss Ikon Bobette II, from about 1926. It's <em>just </em>smaller than normal 35 mm: the frame is something like 21 x 33 mm, on a 35 mm wide roll film, with backing paper. It's quite an effort to use it, because I have to cut down roll film to fit it, and mark up a backing paper with frame numbers; but at least I can do that.<br>

There must be people frustrated with digital cameras that still work, but use storage media the makers have declared obsolete.<br>

Off topic; can you imagine trying to develop Disc film at home?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The way you feel about sub-35mm formats was pretty much the way the view camera and 6cm people felt (and some still do) about 35mm.<br>

Anyway, aside from APS-C and 4/3 in digital, the process of cultural selection (aka the "market") spoke.</p>

<p>We'ed all like to get results (with film) that looked like medium format or larger but have you ever tried to tote around a Pentax 6X7 and 3 or 4 primes? So 24X36mm on double perf movie film became the middle ground. Convenience and mobility vs quality, each person must make the decision. For myself, I have a selection from a 6X9 Kodak Tourist to a 10X14mm Minolta 16II. My standard print size with the 16II is 5X7, for my half frame 35mm it is 6X8 on standard 8X10 paper and for full 35mm it's 8X10 with a 3mm border. Thats it for the wet darkroom, my enlarger is a tiny Durst Reporter and won't go any higher than 8X on the baseboard. This is just a hobby and that is enough for me. Someday....yes someday I'll scan those 6X9 negs and see what Costo or Ritz can do with the files. Large wet prints were always a chore anyway.</p>

<p>If you bought a Mattel Barbie 110 camera or a Mickey Mouse one from Disney, yes the pictures wouldn't even be worth it to look at. The right camera however with the right optics, produces a fine image provided the print is not a mural. I am still waiting for my disc prints from Dwayne taken with a Minolta Disc-5 but in the mean time, here is a photo taken with a Kodak Trimlite 60, one of the higher end 110 Kodaks that unfortunately takes the obsolete "k" battery. (One of the readers here was generous enough to send me one NOS):</p><div></div>

<p>It was the Leica, and not so much later the Contax, which made possible candid photos. Both cameras were smaller even than the Ermanox and the Rolleiflex, and both produced 36x24 negatives which could be enlarged at least to the sizes commonly wanted.</p>

<p><strong>Jerry</strong>, I guess the truth of it is that in terms of image quality, a good big negative will always beat a good little negative. I started out in photography in an era when 35mm was considered "a miniature format", and for most product / advertising / industrial / architectural photography it stayed that way through the 20th century.</p>

<p>As a lab owners and retailers of cheap cameras in the '70's and 80's, we'd try to persuade customers to use 35mm rather than the very popular 126 format, as the 126 cameras tended to be of lesser quality with correspondingly poorer results, and the square format is unsuited to most compositions. I vividly recall all those holiday snaps on 126, with masses of overexposed sky and sand and little figures in the middle... At the upper end there were some nice 126 cameras, but issues with the film flatness in the 126 cartridge were ongoing. In the main, customers just wanted easy loading and reliable point-and-shoot.</p>

<p>I always detested 110. The cameras were mainly junk and it showed in the print. The films were hard to handle and print, and customers had problems trying to sort out their negatives. The hours I've spent, poring over a lightbox, trying to help customers sort out their reprints...Having said that, there were some serious attempts to produce quality 110 cameras; see my post on the Minolta 110 for results that really surprised me:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/00WOan</p>

<p>Disk was always going to be the disaster it turned out to be, just <em>too</em> small, requiring specialised processing. It never caught on down here, and I don't think we ever sold a Disk camera, even though our operation flew the Kodak flag. As for 1/2 frame 35mm, I always had to wonder "Why?" The cameras were often little gems but not cheap, and all one was achieving was a slight decrease in camera size, and the price of half a film. Processing was no less expensive; I often had customers a little frazzled by the price of a 72-print D&P, most of which they didn't want.</p>

<p>For me, 35mm has always been the minimum worthwhile film size...</p>

 

For the masses, IQ beyond what was needed for a 4x6 was irrelevant. Today the equivalent is a Facebook or Flickr

post. APS was actually a really good idea that worked extremely well. Made obsolete by digital. If not for that, I think it

would have taken over the snapshooter market.

 

--Marc

<p>I just came across a packet of photographs made by my long-ago deceased mother with a Goerz Minicord TLR in the 1950s; it used 16mm film and was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. For photo albums, at least, the pictures were fine...better than the Minox cameras of the time. I also remember she had a miniature projector for filmstrips produced by the camera. This is pretty much of an oddity today...sorry I don't still have it. I remember personally, at that time, using some sort of 127 film camera, my father was using an Argus C3, which to me as a kid, looked like the best thing there was, as those Graflexes and Argus TLRs, like the ones in my grandparents' closets, seemed to be rapidly disappearing.</p>

<p>I think size is sort of relative. For me, I'm not interested in half frame, or 126 or 110 ie anything smaller. As many have mentioned there was a time when 35mm was scorned for many of the same reasons 110 might have been in it's day.<br>

I recall my father commenting as a child in the forties, it was grainy and had to be enlarged to the point that nothing looked good! Of course the marketplace ruled and if snapshots were good enough than size mattered! I've read that Otto Barnack knew he was running against the wind and knew he had to have the very best in optics and developed their line of enlargers to insure a "user friendly" experience. I have discovered the joy of using MF and while I don'T consider 35mm inferior (far from it) lately, I think well if it's going to be film then MF. Sort of if cognac then Hennesy!</p>

<p>I liked the idea of APS at first, but in addition to bad timing it was never really exploited. With the idea of embedding format and other information on the film, I thought they could have produced panoramic shots by actually varying the frame spacing, but instead it was just a crop as usual. In addition, most local processors never actually used the embedded information. If you didn't take advantage of the extra technology, there was little point in using a film and camera combination so close in size to 35, but more expensive.</p>

<p>All those small formats are fine for snapshot sized pictures if the quality of the camera and film are up to it. I have some slides taken long ago with a Minolta 16, which are pretty decent considering the tiny format. In exchange for the poor resolution the small formats permit relatively faster lenses and greater depth of field, good for available light snapshots.</p>

<p>When I was a kid, I shot 127, and always thought that was a nice compromise, remaining relatively miniature, and small enough to fit a normal slide projector, but still enough bigger than 35 mm. to provide a little edge in sharpness.</p>

<p>I was given a Minolta 16 PS as a birthday present when I was 13. It only got used a few times. The processing was expensive and not very good. At 14 I took a more serious interest in photography and got a 35mm SLR. By then I knew about bulk loading so I bought a 100 foot roll of Eastman 4X single edge perf 16mm movie film and bulk loaded it into the used Minolta 16 cartridges. The lens on that camera is surprisingly sharp. The annoying part came when I had to use a Federal diffusion enlarger with the not so great 3" Fedar Anastigmat. I cut a negative carrier/mask out of black construction paper with a single edge razor. Then I turned the enlarger around, piled my school books on the baseboard and swung around the head. The easel sat on the floor and I must have looked like an orangutan focusing with one hand and getting my eyes as close to the floor as I could to see the image. Luckily I did not try the Minox format.<br>

There are two half frame cameras in my collection. The first is the Konica Auto Reflex which can be used in half frame mode. The second is the Konica AA 35 (Recorder in Japan) which looks like a disc camera. With a little care you can get very nice results from the half frame format. My favorite 110 camera must be the Trimlite 48 with the 26mm f/2.7 Ektar. I haven't tried it recently so I don't know whether the K battery is still good. I understand that K batteries can be rebuilt. The Pentax Auto 110 and Minolta 110 ZOOM SLR are also capable picture takers if you can find good processing. I would still like to add a Mark II to my collection.<br>

A format which gets no respect is APS. In that format I have a Pronea S, a Pronea 6i and a Minolta Vectis S-1. I like using the Vectis with the 50/3.5 macro lens even if there isn't much manual control. The Pronea S with the 20-60 IX Nikkor is a very capable outfit. The 20-60 is sharp at all focal lengths, at all distances, at all apertures and from center to corner. There isn't much film choice now and processing is expensive where you can find it but you can do quality work with it. I still shoot more 35mm film than any other type. My other formats are 6X4.5, 6X6, 6X7, 4X4 and 24X56. The 24X56 is done with a 35W back on the Bronica ETR series cameras. </p>

<p>Film quality has improved to the point where, if you're still shooting 35mm film, the half-frame format can make some high-quality enlargements up to 8x10. Not a lot of cameras around in that format, compared to the number of full-frame 35mm cameras, of course. I've found that a lot of what people blame on poor quality equipment, image size that's too small, etc., really is just camera shake. 4x5 and 8x10 make great, sharp images for two reasons: bigger negatives require less enlarging and the cameras often or almost always are mounted on tripods.</p>

<p>Well, 110 cameras have their uses: You can smuggle it in for a concert, for instance:</p><div></div>

<p>...and the small size of the cameras also lends itself well to taking stealth pictures of snails engaged in sexual intercourse:</p><div></div>

<p>Other than these purposes, I don't use my 110 cameras much anymore :-)<br /><br />Soeren</p>

<p>Stanhopes, anyone?</p>

<p>I don't know... there was a time not too long ago when film grain was like this evil curse that everyone wanted to avoid like the plague. In fact, just recently I was told that my flatbed scanner is crap because it enhances grain. Hmmm... I say.. GOOD! All of that "analog noise" lets me know my photographs are on film. They are the real deal, not the result of some $1 iPhone app. I expect that there are others who feel the same way I do and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be people out there who are attuned to film images just as some people prefer the sound of records over CD's. Half-frame format just means more grain for the same size enlargement to me. Bring it on.</p>