Silverbased

From time to time, someone posts an anxious question to one of Flickr’s film-camera discussion groups, about definitions: “Would an Agfa Clack be considered a box camera?” “Is my Argus Seventy-Five a twin-lens-reflex?” “Does a Kodak Pony count as a Toy Camera?”

These questions can spawn long threads—and often frustrating ones—as different posters assert their own personal understanding of the disputed term. Often these opinions are oblivious to historically-accepted usage; or are trying to define a concept (like Toy Camera) which is inherently subjective.

I had all this in mind when a similar question occurred to me about 127 film. While this film size is teetering on the edge of extinction, 127 black & white is still manufactured by Efke in Croatia, and I’ve enjoyed shooting it. (The lowest price I’ve found is from Freestyle Photo in California—although note their $25 minimum order.)

So for a brief while longer, we might ponder the enigma, “would 127 film be considered medium format?”

The answer is not entirely obvious: 127, like 120, is a roll film supplied on open spools with a lightproof backing paper. It’s about 47mm wide, versus 120 film’s 63mm.

A majority of early 127 cameras took frames of 1-5/8″x 2-1/2″, yielding 8 shots per roll. Those measurements are roughly equivalent to today’s 6 x 4.5 format—a size we assuredly include in the medium-format camp.

Actually, the long dimension of modern “ideal format” 645 negatives is always 56mm (it’s limited by the width of the 120 film stock). But in a traditional 127 camera, the frame’s long dimension runs parallel to the film and can be as wide as 65mm—thus giving an even larger negative area than today’s 645 standard.

On the other hand, when someone uses the term medium format, there’s an implication of sharpness and detail greater than what’s attainable with 35mm. I always have a chuckle when someone says they shoot medium format—then it turns out they own a Holga. Well, technically, yes. But the blurriness of the plastic lens totally negates any extra detail inherent in the film size.

The majority of the world’s 127 cameras were simple snapshot cameras, e.g. many of Kodak’s hugely popular Brownie series. It seems rather ludicrous to call a non-focusing bakelite Brownie Starflash a medium-format camera.

The most notable high-quality 127 cameras were the 4×4 twin-lens-reflexes produced during the brief Superslide boom of the late 1950s. Rollei touched off the trend in 1957 with its charming gray baby Rolleiflex; and was quickly joined by a flock of Japanese imitators, for example my delightful Yashica 44:

The Superslide concept was that an image 38mm square would still fit within a standard 2″ cardboard slide mount (allowing the same trays to be used), yet would offer a larger, clearer image that filled the screen. But Kodachrome never became available in 127 size; and whether for this or other reasons, the Superslide fad ultimately fizzled.

Yet an image 38mm square is really getting too small to qualify for “medium-format-ness.” As a point of reference, Kodak’s 828 Bantam cameras used an image area of 28 x 40mm —yet 828 was universally grouped alongside 35mm as a “miniature” format (828 stock actually was 35mm wide; omitting the sprocket holes allowed for a taller image).

So, does 127 count as medium format or not?

Well as so often turns out, the question turns out to be somewhat misguided. The heyday of 127 film was the middle decades of the 20th century. And in that era, the term “medium format” simply wasn’t used.

I have a July, 1957 issue of Popular Photography, a special issue dedicated to “120-620 Roll-Film.” The highlight was a review of all the twin-lens-reflexes then available. Another article profiled 120-using pros.

The words medium format do not appear in this issue once.

It’s true that in the 1950s, 35mm models were becoming increasingly numerous and capable. And particularly since Kodachrome slide shooters could only buy 35mm (and 828), amateur demand for the smaller format was mushrooming. But commercial photographers remained wary of using the tiny negatives for serious work. Many were still shooting 4×5 film in their Speed Graphics. What were then termed “roll film” cameras (including 120, 127 and 620) were the mainstream choice for many photographers.

Then about 1959, a revolution began: Camera-makers introduced the first 35mm SLRs featuring instant-return mirrors and instant-reopen diaphragms (for example the landmark Nikon F). With those innovations, the advantages of the fast-handling 35mm SLR soon overwhelmed all other camera types, even in professional use—a dominance which would endure for 40 years.

By the middle 1960s, 35mm had become so universal that it was necessary to distinguish between it and those older, larger film sizes—and this is when the term “medium format” began to appear.

Thus, medium format is a term something like landline. Originally obscure jargon used by radiotelephone operators, landline makes a distinction which only became relevant after cell-phone use exploded. Before that, people simply called it a phone.

Meanwhile, 1963 saw another revolution: Kodak launched the first Instamatic cameras, using the drop-in plastic 126 cartridge. This incredibly successful introduction quickly dominated the snapshot-camera market. During the 1960s, introductions of new 127 cameras dwindled to zero.

So it’s really useless to ask whether 127 counts as medium format—it’s asking a question that, historically speaking, doesn’t have an answer.

But if you do have a camera that uses 127 film, go out there and shoot with it while you still can! Rather than fretting over terminology, that’s what’s really important.