Paper Sizes

USA photographers have not quite adopted the international paper sizes. Our standard sizes have been (in inches): 4x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14 and so on while the International sizing is a letter value followed by a numerical value such as A4 and so on.

I found a neat chart of international paper sizes which I have added to my digital photography notes. Here is the chart:

http://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm

BTW: Another interesting bit of trivia is the way we Yanks state sizes. We normally will state the smaller value first followed by the higher value, as an example 8-inches by 10 inches while the rest of the English speaking world, it seems, states the higher value first followed by the lowervalue such as 10 x 8....

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Originally Posted by rpcrowe

while the rest of the English speaking world, it seems, states the lower value first followed by the higher value such as 10 x 8....

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Nope - us Canucks follow the same naming convention as is used in the USA.

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Originally Posted by rpcrowe

. . . while the rest of the English-speaking world, it seems, states the lower value first followed by the higher value such as 10 x 8....

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:confused:

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Originally Posted by xpatUSA

:confused:

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Ted...

Thanks, that was a senior moment when I mistyped that!

Manfred,

I remember converting my wife's measurements to the decimal system when I traveled to the Philippines, only to find that the tailors there were using the English system of inches.

BTW: shouldn't we rename that to the non-English system since the U.K. has gone decimal...

I grew up in the UK and NZ with the imperial measurements - not just feet and inches, but links, chains, furlongs and all those derived units like pressure, power etc. I embraced the arrival of the metric systems with enthusiasm when NZ converted in the 1970's (our currency went metric in 1967). Suddenly I could type in decimals on a calculator and add them up! Then we embraced the metric paper sizes and I loved the ability to scale up and down images and keep the proportions constant.

Then I went to Canada, a country that has ostensibly gone metric, only to discover that many people cling to imperial and no-one seems to use metric sized paper! Apparently it is because the mills are geared up to cater for the US and 34 million people is not considered a significant market... The UK has issues too, as they often display speeds in MPH, and sell petrol in gallons, despite being "metric". I found the worst thing about the changeover was conversion of one unit to another. It is best to go cold turkey and just adopt the new units. In my engineering office I was appointed Mr Metrication. On the appointed day I collected every imperial scale ruler and replaced it with a metric equivalent so we could read m, mm etc off imperial drawings. It worked brilliantly.

What I find most perplexing is that around the early days of the emergence of the US as a nation they were allied to France and at war with the UK. Yet they shunned the new French metric system and are one of the last hold-outs for the UK imperial system (except for US gallons, which are for some reason different from the imperial gallon!)
:D

Much of what goes on in the background in the US IS metric, but the consumer still seems to engage with imperial measures and sizes. One day I hope that will change and we can all speak the same numerical language. :):)

Dominance of metrics has led to some interesting issues with regards colloquial English. A friend of mine said within earshot of their kids "give them an inch and they take a mile" the kids wanted to know what that was all about. Somehow it loses a bit in translation when one says "give them 25.4mm and they take 1.6093km!":D

The key to international paper sizes is the ratio between their edges. It's always the square root of 2, 1.414 give or take.

That's why you can always get the next size down by folding in half, and why actual dimensions are such odd looking numbers.

It's also why I have 1:1.414 in my Lightroom preset crop ratios!

What is a bit odd with photo paper in the UK is that, while larger sizes are generally A3 or A4, smaller sizes are still sold as 6" by 4", or 150mm by 100mm. No idea why.

Dave

Going back to gallons and such, I learned in school that "a pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter". When I repeated this to an American friend, he told me he'd learned "a pint is a pound, the whole world round". So there.

Dave

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Originally Posted by davidedric

Going back to gallons and such, I learned in school that "a pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter". When I repeated this to an American friend, he told me he'd learned "a pint is a pound, the whole world round". So there.

Dave

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At my local club, we still have a running difference of opinion between wet darkroom workers who still print on 20"x16" (16"x20"US :rolleyes:) paper size and the digital community who print to a 500mm x 400mm size. In fact, the adoption of the metric system is not yet total in the UK. You can still find many products marked in ft, ins, lbs and oz in shops and supermarkets.

It gets worse. I'm a passionate bread baker and often resort to the internet to discover something different. It's gets difficult however when US and Canadian recipes measure quantities in cup measures rather than grms and Kgs and even more frustrating when you discover that a US cup measure is not the same as a UK cup measure.

But there again diversity is what makes the world interesting.:o

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It gets worse. I'm a passionate bread baker and often resort to the internet to discover something different. It's gets difficult however when US and Canadian recipes measure quantities in cup measures rather than grms and Kgs and even more frustrating when you discover that a US cup measure is not the same as a UK cup measure.

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And how the heck are you supposed to measure out a cup of butter :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by davidedric

And how the heck are you supposed to measure out a cup of butter :rolleyes:

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Easy. You take a pound and cut it in half.:D

Trev,here is a sign still in use today on Loch Lomond roadside....http://i68.tinypic.com/sls60j.jpg

Time for a rant.

While there are a few countries with incomplete transition to the metric system, Wikipedia lists exactly three countries that are not officially metric: The U.S., Myanmar, and Liberia. I had recalled one in the Carribean, but apparently it must have switched.

This means that kids in the US have to learn two systems, since all of science, including in the US, is in metric. Anyone who wants to produce goods for sale almost anywhere else in the world needs to use metric. US tourists have trouble even with outdoor temperature when they travel anywhere outside the US. I keep two sets of tools, since things manufactured for use here require imperial wrenches but damned near everything else, including my cars, require metric.

And the US system is much harder to use. Quick: a recipe calls for 1 pint and 5 ounces of liquid. Cut it in thirds. This is made worse by the arbitrary convention of using fractions rather than decimals in the 'Imperial' system (which I find a big nuisance when framing, e.g., when figuring out the overlay of a mat board).

Recognizing the foolishness of this, Congress passed legislation to begin the transition to metric fully forty years ago. Ronald Reagan killed it by executive action.

John--even though I am in the US, my solution to the recipe problem is that when it is complex, I just translate the recipe to metric to start. Many of the approximate conversions are fine (although perhaps not quite accurate enough for some baking). E.g. 1 tablespoon is very close to 15 ml. Cups are not as close, but they aren't that different. A metric cup is 1/4 liter, which isn't much larger than a US cup.

Even on this site, the US system is a PITA. If one wants to explain dimensions, which system do you use? I have started using both.

At a time when pins on the edge of integrated circuits were always 1/8" (or was it 1/10"?) my girlfriend, who laid out circuit boards for our recently-metricated UK company, stated often and vigorously that converting the pins' pitch to metric was really stupid and refused to do it.

At that time (mid to late 70's) we were dutifully buying cloth by the meter - but still one yard or 4 ft wide.

I like the US Customary System of Units, having grown up with the Imperial system. I also like the ISO Metric system for stuff like photography and am generally happy with whatever system is appropriate to the job at hand. Hey, doing fractions for carpentry keeps the brain active and I can always turn to my Casio fractional calculator if in doubt . . .

Another anecdote ( and apologies to Richard who must be wondering how his original helpful post led to all this joshing).

I spent some time as a voluntary assistant in adult numeracy classes.

Working with learners who were essentially inumerate, decimal arithmetic was much easier to grasp than fractions, even though in normal language they (and I) would refer to a half, or a quarter (also the same in other European languages I am acquainted with)

Dave

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Originally Posted by davidedric

The key to international paper sizes is the ratio between their edges. It's always the square root of 2, 1.414 give or take.

That's why you can always get the next size down by folding in half, and why actual dimensions are such odd looking numbers.

It's also why I have 1:1.414 in my Lightroom preset crop ratios!

What is a bit odd with photo paper in the UK is that, while larger sizes are generally A3 or A4, smaller sizes are still sold as 6" by 4", or 150mm by 100mm. No idea why.

Dave

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Probably due to the same ratio as a sensor/film: 24x36 or 2x3.

George

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Probably due to the same ratio as a sensor/film: 24x36 or 2x3.

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Yes, but the silly thing is that if I crop to "A" sizes, I can print one up to A4, but if I want the same crop but smaller, I usually print two up on A4.

Is A5 paper readily available in the Netherlands?

Dave

While I agree as an American that the U.S. system is usually more difficult to use, at least the details about paper size are an exception because the size is expressed in inches rather than code made up of a letter and a number.

And you folks thought the thread would never get back on topic. :D

I mentioned to a Navy buddy that we should have converted to the decimal system years ago.

He asked, "Why should we have done that?"

I said, "O.K. How many feet in a mile?"

The answer was "How should I know?"

I answered, "EXACTLY!"

The thing about the Imperial system is that it was never really designed, it evolved. Furthermore it suited a society that wanted to work on fractions because they were easier to use in the pre-digital age. However I like the consistency of the SI (Systems International) system which is based on decimals and therefore excellent to use with digital calculating devices, which is certainly not true of fractions - when I get measurements in feet and inches I have to convert them to parts of a foot and then I can add them up in Excel.

For A-sized paper I definitely like the idea that as I reduce or increase the paper sizes the proportions remain constant, not just for photography but for all sorts of applications including sizing technical drawings.

The seeming oddity about A series paper is that it is based on the idea that an A0 sheet is pretty much exactly 1sqm in area. Take into acount the required ratios to achieve that and we get the seemingly weird dimension. Each smaller sheet is half the area, each 2x smaller sheet is half the dimensions and so on.

And to further your point Richard... Which kind of mile - terrestrial or nautical? There is only one kind of km!

There is logic in the Philippines using imperial. The islands came under US influence during the Spanish/American war and were essentially one of the US' first colonial acquisitions. Consequently they have the same measurement system.

Bernard

I like your image, it shows the incongruous and inconsistent nature of the UK system.
So in metric terms it's 10km to Cross (6x1.6093m) and
Luss is 11km away 10km + [1km = (1 furlong = 10 chains = 201.168m) x5!]

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Originally Posted by davidedric

And how the heck are you supposed to measure out a cup of butter :rolleyes:

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This is how butter comes here in the US...

http://i64.tinypic.com/16lmc5v.jpg

Each slice that you see here is 1/4 tbsp. so 4 slices is equivalent to 1/4 cup. The whole is 1 cup. There is a marking to indicate 1/4 tbsp measurement, so we do not get confused...my friends from the cooking group are envious of us here because we have this exact measurement...

Oh btw...Richard thanks for the link...It surely helps.

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Originally Posted by Tronhard

Then I went to Canada, a country that has ostensibly gone metric, only to discover that many people cling to imperial and no-one seems to use metric sized paper! Apparently it is because the mills are geared up to cater for the US and 34 million people is not considered a significant market... The UK has issues too, as they often display speeds in MPH, and sell petrol in gallons, despite being "metric".

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Yes, Canada went metric pretty well 40 years ago but when I go to the store to buy loose tea or meat I ask for a half pound or whatever. Our house thermometer is metric but I run my greenhouse thermometer in fahrenheit since that's what I was first used to in trying to heat a greenhouse. As Trev noted, lumber is imperial in Canada. I wonder about kids who learn metric at school and then if they become a carpenter have to figure out what a foot is. It all makes life interesting.

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Originally Posted by Tronhard

The thing about the Imperial system is that it was never really designed, it evolved.

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And, as a person who has spent his entire working life measuring stuff, that is why I prefer the imperial system of measurement. In my opinion we should have never gone over to the silly metric system - a relic of the French revolution. The French even changed the clock to 100 minutes per hour, degrees minutes and seconds and the whole catastrophe. Fortunately common sense, in the form of the British Navy, prevailed as this craziness made navigational calculations even more difficult. The advent of electronic calculators has largely made the arguments in favour of metric obsolete.

Why is the imperial system so good? It is because it is intuitive. We all have a foot, therefore we know how long is foot is, roughly. likewise an inch or a yard. Even today, in Australia, children who know nothing of the imperial system will express a person's height in feet and inches. We can easily visualise the difference between a person who is 5'6" and one who is 6'2", but to say someone is 185 cm tall is pretty meaningless to most people.

If I want to pace out 100 yards - 100 long paces will do it, but 100 metres requires 120 paces. OK if you know it confusing to judge distance if you don't.

So good on the USA for retaining the sensible, tried and tested by time, imperial system.

In Australia we say the large unit first - thus a piece of timber will be described as a 4b2 (even today).

But one unforgivable American numerical crime is to state dates by month first. This is completely counter-intuitive. All sensible people go from the smallest to the largest - day/month/year. Very confusing as I found when I was required to submit a photography entry by 11/12/2014. Naturally I submitted it before 11th December - sorry I was told - you are a month too late.
Grant

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Originally Posted by Tronhard

Bernard

I like your image, it shows the incongruous and inconsistent nature of the UK system.
So in metric terms it's 10km to Cross (6x1.6093m) and
Luss is 11km away 10km + [1km = (1 furlong = 10 chains = 201.168m) x5!]

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Reminds me of the "Peter Principle" of physics - Units shall, always be expressed in the most obscure manner possible.

Eg, acceleration - furlongs per fortnight squared. :)

Grant

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Originally Posted by mastamak

Reminds me of the "Peter Principle" of physics - Units shall, always be expressed in the most obscure manner possible.

Eg, acceleration - furlongs per fortnight squared. :)

Grant

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Must be a glacially slow horse... :D Isn't Aussie metric too? I had always thought so.

Sorry Grant, have to disagree I HATE imperial for distance, area and paper sizes (actually all those derived metrics as well) and I grew up with it! I made the decision to go metric and never look back and I'm glad I did.... I can still work in imperial, but on a computer it's a pain in the proverbial! When I was doing legal survey I had to work in links and chains for lineal measure, then acres, roods and perches for area. Now all I have to do is think metres and hectares! ;)

However, you DO have my support on the degrees, minutes and seconds issue of compasses. Rads just never gelled for me.

In Canada the official format for dates is YYYYMMDD, and there is good reason for that. If one inputs a date in that format into a text box you can sort chronologically just fine, any other format cannot be sorted without algorithms. (Don't confuse this with an AlGoreRythm: the music that Bill Clinton's VP liked to play... or a LoggerRhythm: the music that lumberjacks dance to...) :D

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Originally Posted by davidedric

Yes, but the silly thing is that if I crop to "A" sizes, I can print one up to A4, but if I want the same crop but smaller, I usually print two up on A4.

Is A5 paper readily available in the Netherlands?

Dave

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But you've to crop. And when I let my film develop I just want to see what's on it. The same for digital. If going bigger I suspect that you are more dedicated to a certain presentation.

The Netherlands are quite normal, so metric.:)

There are also B and C formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

I think the main purpose of this approach is that one can get a smaller format out of a bigger without loss of paper.

If printing yourself the A5 format is quite pleasant. You can get 2 out off a A4 paper. You can put it in a A4 map and it's some bigger as a "normal" photoprint. I think it's much cheaper too.

George

How does Super A3 e.g. 13"(329mm) x 19"(483mm) fit into all this?...:)

I often cut it in half when I want a 12" x 8" print plus a border. Actually I wish Epson would supply a "Super A4" size as I would find it very useful.

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Originally Posted by pnodrog

How does Super A3 e.g. 13"(329mm) x 19"(483mm) fit into all this?...:)

I often cut it in half when I want a 12" x 8" print plus a border. Actually I wish Epson would supply a "Super A4" size as I would find it very useful.

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Super A3 doesn't exist. It's not a normalised size. I'd to look it up myself http://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm

George

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Originally Posted by george013

Super A3 doesn't exist. It's not a normalised size. I'd to look it up myself http://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm

George

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I know it does not exist but Epson sells it and I use it......:) They also call it A3+

Part No S041352, S041340 plus others.

I have and have used A3+ in Canon Photo Paper.
I usually purchase from the following online retailer, for clarity I've no commercial link to the supplier

https://www.7dayshop.com/products/ca...-a3-2768B018AB

I don't find it difficult to visualise metric distances. For instance 1 metre is 39 inches. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by John 2

I don't find it difficult to visualise metric distances. For instance 1 metre is 39 inches. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

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I struggle to visualise light years and infinity in either metric or imperial......:)

And to have more fun: from the wikipedia papersizes by example A4 210x297mm, equal with 8.27"x11.7". How do you work with decimal inches?

Saying A3+ doesn't exist means it's not a standard size as it suggests. Everybody can take some pair of scissors. That that size is sold means off course it has some background why.

George

OK we are talking of, not only paper sizes here but also measurements...I know what a foot is but dang if I can translate that in mm unless I look at the internet for the equivalent (Bless Al Gore who invented the internet!! :rolleyes:) at least I can have a reference. But eggs?!?!!??? either it is a dozen count/box (western countries) or 10 count/box (Asian countries)...wonder why --my weakness are maths and sciences in school and never been really good at it but we deal with it almost everyday of our lives.

Trev, I've been in trouble about dates too because as an Aussie raised person, it was hard to write your birthday on a bank profile as MM/DD/YYYY because of my thinking YYYY/MM/DD, instead of writing 04/11/YYYY I wrote YYYY/04/11. I thought it was easy to understand for me but they thought the other way around and I cannot access my account until I asked my husband to sort it with them because "I can't understand Western English.." :p

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Originally Posted by IzzieK

OK we are talking of, not only paper sizes here but also measurements...I know what a foot is but dang if I can translate that in mm unless I look at the internet for the equivalent (Bless Al Gore who invented the internet!! :rolleyes:) at least I can have a reference. But eggs?!?!!??? either it is a dozen count/box (western countries) or 10 count/box (Asian countries)...wonder why --my weakness are maths and sciences in school and never been really good at it but we deal with it almost everyday of our lives.

Trev, I've been in trouble about dates too because as an Aussie raised person, it was hard to write your birthday on a bank profile as MM/DD/YYYY because of my thinking YYYY/MM/DD, instead of writing 04/11/YYYY I wrote YYYY/04/11. I thought it was easy to understand for me but they thought the other way around and I cannot access my account until I asked my husband to sort it with them because "I can't understand Western English.." :p

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Date is another thing. I'm used to ddmmyy. But when sorting things it's easier to write yymmdd. If you sort date on a pc as a character value you should do that. If you sort date as a date value, it doesn't make a difference. Dates are calculated back as a numerical value with a offset date. I thought it was january 1 1900. Not sure.

Another thing is the decimal point or comma. A year ago the council of Amsterdam made some transfers. In stead of 1.8 million they transferred 180 million. It was at the same time the involved bank changed their website. It was the only bank that uses the decimal comma, others use the decimal point.

George

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Originally Posted by Tronhard

The thing about the Imperial system is that it was never really designed, it evolved. Furthermore it suited a society that wanted to work on fractions because they were easier to use in the pre-digital age. However I like the consistency of the SI (Systems International) system which is based on decimals and therefore excellent to use with digital calculating devices, which is certainly not true of fractions - when I get measurements in feet and inches I have to convert them to parts of a foot and then I can add them up in Excel.

For A-sized paper I definitely like the idea that as I reduce or increase the paper sizes the proportions remain constant, not just for photography but for all sorts of applications including sizing technical drawings.

The seeming oddity about A series paper is that it is based on the idea that an A0 sheet is pretty much exactly 1sqm in area. Take into acount the required ratios to achieve that and we get the seemingly weird dimension. Each smaller sheet is half the area, each 2x smaller sheet is half the dimensions and so on.

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When I took my College Graduate Record Exam, as part of my Master of Science Degree program. there was a section in the Math Portion dealing with fractions. For some of the more complicated fractional equations, I found it easier to convert the darn things to metric and do my calculations in metric. Since the answers were multiple choice, I would then select the fractional answer closest to my metric calculations. Clumsy, yes! However, I did quite well on that section of the test!

I can live with Imperial Measurements but, have problems with the really unique and archaic measurement units such as "stone" (for a persons weight), "rods" and "chains" for distance, "hands" for a horses height, and so on! Furlongs seem only to be used in America regarding horse racing distances.

Here is the Wikipedia explanation of some of these measurements derived from the Old English:

The rod is a historical unit of length equal to 5½ yards. It may have originated from the typical length of a mediaeval ox-goad. There are 4 rods in one chain.

The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains.

An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one ox in one day. Traditional acres were long and narrow due to the difficulty in turning the plough and the value of river front access.

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Originally Posted by rpcrowe

When I took my College Graduate Record Exam, as part of my Master of Science Degree program. there was a section in the Math Portion dealing with fractions. For some of the more complicated fractional equations, I found it easier to convert the darn things to metric and do my calculations in metric. Since the answers were multiple choice, I would then select the fractional answer closest to my metric calculations. Clumsy, yes! However, I did quite well on that section of the test!

I can live with Imperial Measurements but, have problems with the really unique and archaic measurement units such as "stone" (for a persons weight), "rods" for distance, "hands" for a horses height, and so on!

Another thing that REALLY GRIPES ME is carpentry measurements of lumber sizes. Why should a 2-inch x 4" piece of wood actually measure 1.75-inches x 3.75-inches.

Plywood is another thing thatis off

Plywood Thickness:
Sanded Nominal Thickness
1/4 3/8 1/2 5/8 3/4 1-1/8
Actual Thickness
1/4 11/32 15/32 19/32 23/32 1-1/8

None of the actual thicknesses coincide with the nominal thicknesses except in the 1-1/8 size

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Rough wood is mentioned, planed wood is sold.

Also something alike with iron pipes. In Holland they're cold iron thread pipes and numbered in inches. When you measure the 1" pipe, you will never find the 1". Explanation: When factoring the pipes became better, a less thickness could be archieved with the same quality.

George

Stones and pounds are still used by the older generation (like me) - not really archaic! Same for hands, still universally used in the UK so far as I know.

Fortnight, for two weeks, still in use, but sennight for a week went out a while go.

As another useless piece of information, the length of a cricket pitch is one chain.

Dave