Sound Person's Guide to Video

Chapter 14

Film Stock, Film Laboratories

I don’t think you will be surprised if I say that the film that runs through your 35 mm stills camera is not the same as the film that runs through the motion picture cameras used in top Hollywood productions. The manufacturer’s name – Kodak, Agfa or Fuji – may be the same but the stock certainly isn’t. The reason we use 35 mm film for stills is simply that it has been the motion picture standard since Edison ordered a stock of film in that gauge from George Eastman for his early experiments. Some years later director Oskar Barnack decided that it would be useful to have a stills camera to test stock before running through his motion picture camera. The first 35 mm stills camera, made by Ernst Leitz, was ...