Types of Film: Roll Film Scanning

A 16mm roll film conversion requires different microfilm scanner hardware accessories than a 35 mm roll film digital conversion, such as smaller rollers and guiders. That being said when it comes to digital microfilm conversion, the final product is not different when comparing 16mm to 35mm.

Generally speaking, most types of documents are contained on 16mm roll film. In many cases 8.5 x 11 or 8.5 x 14 images are on the bulk of 16mm microfilm. Of course, 16 mm film can also contain maps, blueprints, checks, computer printouts, EKG graphs, earthquake records, and technically anything that was on paper.

From the technical standpoint, the reduction ratio or aspect ratio is very different. Most 16mm film was reduced from 18x to 48x.

16mm and 35mm microfilm conversions are by far the most frequent and common for microfilming. On very rare occasions, older types of film like 70mm roll film needed to be digitized.