The vast majority of cassettes for 35mm cameras can be divided into two types, the sort with a fixed velvet-lip light trap and the labyrinthine type.

At their most basic, paper grades could hardly be easier to understand or to master. Paper grades range from 00 (very soft) to 5 (very hard).

It is amusing that today, 120 film is regarded as a professional medium that is difficult to handle. After all, for decades it was the amateur standard for snapshots, used without a second thought by even the most fumble-fingered.

For most practical purposes, ‘medium format’ can be taken as synonymous with 120/220 roll film, though another way to define it is by what it is not: it is bigger than 35mm, and is therefore not ‘miniature’ but it is smaller than 9x12cm or 4×5 inch, and therefore not ‘large format’.