Paper size standards

[hiroh]

I'm curious why paper designed for platinum prints (Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag, Arches Platine) are made in 11x15" size, and some other (or most) photographic paper is 11x14.

I also have portfolio boxes in 11x14 sizes, so I either have to cut my platine prints by 1 inch, or... choose another box just for those.

I'm just curious, where this standards are coming from?

[hiroh]

Oh, also most contact frames that I know are also 11x14.

[Mark Sampson]

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them".

The current sizes for photographic materials are about a hundred years old, and have little to do with the standards for papermakers and publishers. Which themselves are woefully inconsistent. It's been that way for centuries and is not likely to change. Adoption of the metric system in most of the world did not help.

In your shoes, I'd trim my prints.

[jnantz]

11x15 is also a dot matrix fan fold / tabloid paper size

[hiroh]

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them".

The current sizes for photographic materials are about a hundred years old, and have little to do with the standards for papermakers and publishers. Which themselves are woefully inconsistent. It's been that way for centuries and is not likely to change. Adoption of the metric system in most of the world did not help.

In your shoes, I'd trim my prints.

Yeah but Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag and Arches Platine are not hundred years old papers, they are quite new as far as I know, and they choose 11x15 instead more often used 11x14, so I'm just curious why both platinum papers are 15inches and many other silver gelatin papers are 14 inches. There must be a reason somewhere in the history.

[revdoc]

There's a common paper size called "imperial", but usually referred to as "full sheet", 30x22 inches, or 56x76cm. A lot of art papers are sold in this size. Often two edges are deckled, which I think shows the width of the mould used to make it.

Cut an imperial sheet into 4, and you get 11x15 sheets.

I generally buy imperial sheets for alt processes, and break them down to the size I need. For me, this is generally the cheapest way of buying paper.

Some other paper sizes with colourful names:

https://vintagepaper.co/blogs/news/traditional-paper-sizes

[esearing]

And why is photo paper 11 x 14? when cameras are commonly 8x10 or 4x5. And why aren't frames sold in 10x12 or 11x13 so that 8x10 can have equal dimensions on all sides when matted? I use the extra 1" strip for testing alt prints.

[koraks]

And why is photo paper 11 x 14? when cameras are commonly 8x10 or 4x5.
The next step up is in fact 11x14 as a standard film size. To a large extent photographic paper sizes tend to align with film sizes. This is both true in metric and imperial systems. I.e. 4x5", 5x7", 8x10" and 11x14" are common film and paper sizes. In metric, 10x15cm, 13x18cm and 18x24cm are common film and paper sizes.

[jnantz]

it's for the same reason gas pumps still charge for 9/10 of 1¢

[bashful]

A completely uneducated guess: 5x7 times two would be 10x14, plus a half-inch border = 11x15.

[esearing]

It likely has to do with Manufacturing wastes back in the early days. As someone mentioned you would buy paper of a certain width as a sheet (or on a roll) and cut it into various sizes with minimal waste to coat.

[John Layton]

Ha! I remember devising an experiment in high school biology class...where I ran maze trials using pillbugs as subjects in multiples of 44 (maze runs per pillbug) and derived my data from this. "Why, oh why, did you choose this number of runs?" asked my biology teacher. "Well," I replied..."my sheets of notebook paper each have 44 lines!" (poor pillbugs)