filmsize

I’ve found from experience that a lot of people who are looking to get their films copied are not themselves familiar with cine movie film, as the film was often shot by another member of the family. I have noted on the right the two reel sizes that are likely to be encountered with 8mm film.

The smaller reel is the one the film is likely to be returned by the lab on, following processing. Larger reels tend to get used for edited films where the total length goes beyond 50 feet.

I have produced a very simplified diagram below showing the relative shapes of the various popular gauges.
Note that while both 8mm format are the same overall width, Super 8 has achieved a larger image size by reducing the size of the sprocket holes. The downside with the larger frame size was fewer images fitted on a given length of film and this meant that a 50 foot length of Super 8 film has a shorter running time than the Standard 8 equivalent.

9.5mm film has obtained an image close in size to 16mm by moving the sprocket hole into the middle of the film, between the frames. With the advent of sound films, 16mm film lost one of it's rows of sprocket holes and one side of the film was used for the magnetic or optical soundtrack. 9.5mm film, alas, had already eked out virtually the entire film width for image and had no margin at the side for a soundtrack. For the most part 9.5mm was regarded as a silent format, though some enterprising 9.5ers striped the film edge anyway and accepted a now almost square image shape or used anamorphic lenses on camera and projector to obtain a rectangular picture.