Aspect ratio of 10x8 and 5x4?

[Corran]

Peter, that's very interesting. I've wondered about that.

In LF sheet film, does Europe have the sizes printed on the box as 5x4 or whatever? My 4x5 comes as marked:

[keith schreiber]

On a related note, at the museum I worked at back in the '90s, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, dimensions were (and still are) always recorded in the format Height x Width, which I think is pretty much standard practice throughout the museum/gallery world, though I'm sure there are exceptions.

Banquet camera formats — 7x17, 8x20, 12x20 — which are usually but not always used in horizontal orientation, and are typically referred to by HxW.

We, of course, can use whatever scheme we prefer.

As for aspect ratios, 10x8 = 8x10 & 5x4 = 4x5, and both are 4:5 or 5:4 if you prefer.

Keith

[Vaughn]

And some industries go by width x height. It's a mess.

[BrianShaw]

Peter, that's very interesting. I've wondered about that.

In LF sheet film, does Europe have the sizes printed on the box as 5x4 or whatever? My 4x5 comes as marked:

Same with my Ilford film.

[Peter Mounier]

It makes sense that for unexposed film we can say it either way, since there is nothing to describe at that point. Perhaps, they established a standard because that's what bureaucracies do. And it probably saves them countless hours and who knows how much paper if they don't have to spell out vertical or horizontal for every image in their catalogue.

[BrianShaw]

It really doesn’t matter yet it seems to come up periodically as almost a major international incident.

[cowanw]

How does one know the height of the film or paper until after you take the picture in portrait or landscape view? wouldn't a box of unexposed film have a mixture of 8x10 and 10x8.

[BrianShaw]

Yes... that is very confusing. What’s worse is that they put the notch code in the same place no matter which format the film is. I’d think they’d at least be courteous enough to mark portrait and landscape sheets different

[Vaughn]

Seems like most sheet film boxes are printed to be viewed in portrait mode. Do they make any boxes for landscape mode?

[jose angel]

So... it was not my lack of talent!!! A lifetime taking landscape photos with the paper in the wrong orientation... that explains why they were all so bad!!!!