Comment by MORPHOICES

Comment by MORPHOICES a day ago

7 replies

View on Hacker News

As I was looking at various film formats, I was reminded of how messy standards are. ~

There are dozens of formats with slightly different sizes and long tails that never fully disappear.

There is almost no rhyme or reason to it and a lot of it feels like it's just been passed down.

After a while, a format can no longer be considered optional. Once again, I see the same pattern with software and I was curious how others view the same phenomenon.

Which standards survived due to inertia? Which lost better alternatives? Where was the emphasis on compatibility over design?

justincormack a day ago

Film is manufactured on huge rolls, and is cut down to different sizes and formats, so its not really that expensive on the manufacturing side to support a lot of formats. From the buy side, cameras are expensive, and almost all cameras only support one format. The big change came with film developing labs on teh high street, as when development was at home it was fairly manual, but once it was automated the machines were designed for fewer formats (for a long time 35mm, and often medium format). But even then, the process doesnt change per format and the chemicals are the same, so supporting variation is relatively cheap.

Reply View 3 replies
  • jacquesm 20 hours ago

    In the early days there were as many formats as there were camera backs because the exposure was at the size of the print. These were positives that were developed directly rather than that they went through an intermediate step of a negative and subsequent enlargement.

    Reply View 2 replies
    • justincormack 20 hours ago

      The glass plate sizes were relatively well standardised, eg whole plate, half plate quarter plate, although other countries had metric and imperial versions. Before the plates were mass produced they may have varied more.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • jacquesm 18 hours ago

        My dad collected old cameras, he had 100's, and the number of formats in use was not all that much smaller than the number of cameras, to the point that we had to cut glass or paper quite often. We also sensitized our own plates and developed metal plates (which is insanely dangerous).

        Reply View 0 replies
guax a day ago

"Where was the emphasis on compatibility over design"

Im confused by this line, standards are meant to promote compatibility, not design. They're a way to, well... standardise processes and things. Its almost a given that you'll have to compromise on design to be able to include enough variance to appease the majority of use cases. It is also desirable, I think, of a standard to not give in to edge cases and niche uses and stay as simple as it can to the general use. There will be other niche standards for those and that is a good thing.

Standards survive and die for the same reason they're created, they make things cheaper, faster and easier. Once they fail at those, they give in to newer entrants. Physical standards can also make things safer, but safety must be enforced as people often are bad at judging risk and prefer the other features to a fault.

Reply View 0 replies
kudeyar a day ago

IKR. This is why i'm always angry at little kids for making a hundred mistakes. why can't they see like i can see? why am i the only one in here that can see?!?!?!

Reply View 0 replies