Film Photography Quiz: Test Your Knowledge

35mm film, also called 135 format, uses a 24x36mm frame on a roll of 35mm wide perforated film. Its balance of frame size, portability, and cost made it the dominant format for both professional and consumer photography across most of the twentieth century.

Portra 400 was designed with skin tone reproduction as a priority, producing subtle, accurate color rendering across a wide range of lighting conditions. Its generous exposure latitude tolerates overexposure without losing highlight detail, making it forgiving in unpredictable light.

Negative film needs enough exposure to record detail in the shadows, and that detail cannot be added later, so you set exposure from the shadows and often give a little extra. Development time mainly controls how dense the highlights become, so you adjust development to keep them printable. The idea comes from the Zone System.

C-41 is the standard process for color negative film, used by nearly every lab. E-6 is the process for color slide (reversal) film, while D-76 and Rodinal are black and white developers.

120 format film is 60mm wide and rolls without perforations. Depending on the camera's film gate, a single roll can produce frames of 6x4.5, 6x6, or 6x7 centimeters, all of which are substantially larger than a 35mm frame.

DX coding is a pattern of metal contacts printed on the film canister. A camera with DX pins reads it and sets the film speed automatically. The barcode on the canister is separate and is read by lab equipment, not by the camera.

Slide film produces the final positive image on the film itself, with no printing step to correct it, and it records a narrow range of about five to six stops. Being off by even half a stop visibly changes the result, and blown highlights are just clear film. Color negative film tolerates several stops of overexposure.

A dedicated film scanner, or a good digital camera with a macro lens photographing the film over an even light source, resolves far more grain and detail than a flatbed. Flatbeds advertise high resolution numbers, but their real optical resolution is much lower and their focus often sits slightly off the film. A phone or photocopier cannot match either.

Checked baggage scanners use high-energy X-rays designed to penetrate dense objects. These rays can penetrate film canisters and partially expose the silver halides, producing fogged areas. Carry-on scanners use lower-energy X-rays that are generally safe for film below ISO 800.

Each frame of film has a direct monetary cost in materials and development. Knowing that every press of the shutter costs money encourages photographers to think through composition, exposure, and timing before shooting rather than relying on high-volume capture to produce a few good results.