Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This paper format issue is rather interesting. I find that sizes available in North America are too few. The most common sizes available are 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 16x20, and 20x24. The next larger size is roughly double in the surface area, and the step is rather large. In Japan, sizes commonly available were 5x7, 8x10, 10x12, 11x14, 12x16, 14x17, 16x20, 18x22, and 20x24. While you wouldn't expect to see them all available at a corner store, they could be purchased at any of the major camera shops in Tokyo. I still have a box of 10x12 Ilford Multigrade fibre paper which I use to print 8x10 images, with a wide border. Nikon's decision to produce a camera with a 32x24mm had good intentions, though. > The disparity between negative formats and paper sizes has been a strangely > held relationship. <snip> > But 35mm has to have been the most strangely ignored format ever! Since > 1926 the 2:3 format has had only one real paper size introduced to very > little commercial success, that of A4. > > Perhaps now, with computer printing geared up to A sizes (at least in > Europe) there will exist a better compatibility between formats of negative > and positive. Actually, these ISO sizes (A(n) and B(n)) have an aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2) As you increase the value of n, the dimensions are reduced by 1/sqrt(2) and the area halved. It is actually a brilliant system, used all over the world, except in the U.S. and Canada.