116 film is one of the oldest roll film formats ever made. Kodak introduced the roll film format in 1895. There were eight roll film formats introduced from 1895-1900! In that same time period Kodak introduced seven different types cartridge film formats. That's fifteen different types of film to choose from way back in 1900. Kodak went crazy when they first introduced the roll film format, as well as the cartridge film format, to the world. Nowadays the two roll films we have are 120 and 220, and the only cartridge based film is 35mm.
My love for this film format starts out with the cameras of the time period. Large, beautiful bellows cameras that advertised themselves as "pocketable" when closed, took over the consumer camera market.
The negative frame size is huge. The dimensions of the negative is 2½"×4¼", or 6.5cm×11cm. The detail captured at the size is phenomenal. Think of it as 120's bigger brother.
The film itself can be reproduced today. It's not an easy task, but respooling 116 film with 70mm unperforated film can be done. What makes this a difficult task is that 70mm film is starting to become very scarce nowadays, especially unperforated 70mm film.
This is the main reason I want to Kickstart a photo book focussed around 116 film and its history. Within 5 more years unperforated 70mm film will be extinct and so will be any way of truly having 116 film. Respooling 116 film with 120 film just isn't the same. It's like comparing a letterboxed movie with the same movie reformatted to pan-and-scan.
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