February 2026
Your First Roll of 120 Film: What to Expect
Everything you need to know about shooting your first roll of medium format film, from the shop to the lab.
You've got a TLR camera. Maybe a Yashica-Mat 124G you bought online, maybe a Rolleicord you inherited, maybe a Seagull you picked up on a whim. It's sitting on your desk and you're looking at it. You know it takes 120 film. You know you need to buy some. But if you've never handled medium format film before, the whole process — from the sealed foil wrapper to the developed negatives — can feel opaque.
This guide walks through it all. No assumptions. No skipped steps.
Buying film
120 film is sold in individual rolls. Unlike 35mm, which comes in a metal cartridge, a roll of 120 film is a spool of film backed by opaque paper, sealed in a foil pouch inside a cardboard box. The paper backing protects the film from light and has frame numbers printed on it that are visible through a small red window on the back of most TLR cameras.
For your first roll, choose a forgiving film stock. Two recommendations:
- Ilford HP5 Plus 400 — Black and white, ISO 400. Wide exposure latitude (you can be a stop or two off and still get good negatives), beautiful grain on medium format, and it's available almost everywhere that sells film. It also pushes well to 800 or 1600 if you decide to experiment with push processing later.
- Kodak Portra 400 — Color negative, ISO 400. The most forgiving color film ever made. Gorgeous skin tones, fine grain for 400 speed, and it handles overexposure beautifully — some photographers deliberately overexpose Portra by a stop and prefer the result. More expensive than HP5, but the colors on medium format are worth it.
Both are ISO 400, which gives you a good range of usable aperture and shutter speed combinations in most daylight conditions. ISO 100 films are sharper and finer-grained but require more light or slower shutter speeds. ISO 400 is the versatile starting point.
You can buy 120 film from camera stores, online retailers, and increasingly from general retailers who have responded to the film revival. Expect to pay $7-10 for a roll of HP5 and $12-15 for Portra 400. Yes, that's $7-15 for twelve pictures. Welcome to film photography.
Loading the camera
This is the step that intimidates people most, and it's simpler than it looks. The specifics vary by camera, but the general process for a TLR is:
1. Open the back. Most TLRs have a latch or knob on the side or bottom. The back panel swings open or lifts off, revealing the film chamber. You'll see two spool positions: one at the top (the supply side) and one at the bottom (the take-up side).
2. Move the empty spool. If there's an empty spool in the supply position from a previous roll, move it to the take-up position. This is the spool the new film will wind onto as you shoot. If you've just bought the camera and it came with no spool — check the bottom of the camera, the case, or the box. You need one take-up spool. They're interchangeable across 120 cameras, and you can buy them cheaply if needed.
3. Load the new roll. Drop the sealed roll of film into the supply position. The film and its paper backing feed off this spool, across the film plane (where the exposures happen), and onto the take-up spool.
4. Thread the paper leader. Pull the tapered paper leader from the new roll and thread it into the slot on the take-up spool. Give the take-up spool a turn or two to make sure the paper is catching and winding evenly. The paper should be centered — not riding up to one side.
5. Close the back. Close the camera back and secure the latch.
6. Advance to frame 1. Turn the film advance knob (or crank, on some cameras) while watching the red window on the back of the camera. You'll see the paper backing scroll past: first plain, then arrows or dots, then the number "1" will appear. Stop. You're at frame 1. Some cameras have an automatic stop mechanism that locks the advance at each frame; others rely on you watching the window. Check your camera's manual.
The whole process takes about thirty seconds once you've done it a few times. The first time, give yourself a few minutes and do it in a room with good light (not direct sunlight — you want to avoid light leaks, but you need to see what you're doing). Some people practice with a sacrificial roll of expired film before loading the good stuff.
One critical rule: don't open the back with film loaded. 120 film has no cartridge to protect it. If you open the back mid-roll, you'll fog every exposed frame. The only time the back opens is before loading and after unloading a finished roll.
Metering and shooting
With film loaded and the advance on frame 1, you're ready to shoot. You need to set two things on the camera: the aperture and the shutter speed. These are determined by the amount of light in the scene and the speed of your film.
If your camera has a working light meter, follow its guidance. If it doesn't — and most TLR meters are long dead — you need an external meter. A phone app like TLR Companion works well: select your camera, set your film's ISO, and the app gives you aperture and shutter speed values that match your camera's actual click-stops. For more on metering methods, see our guide on how to meter without a built-in meter.
Now, the shooting itself:
1. Set the aperture and shutter speed according to your meter reading. On most TLRs, the aperture and shutter controls are on the front of the camera, around or near the taking lens.
2. Compose. Open the waist-level finder (the hood on top of the camera) and look down. You'll see the scene on the ground glass, reversed left-to-right. This is disorienting at first. It gets natural quickly. Move the camera to frame your shot.
3. Focus. Turn the focus knob (usually on the left side of the camera) until the image on the ground glass is sharp. Most TLR ground glass screens are brightest in the center and dim at the edges, so focus using the center of the image. Some cameras have a pop-up magnifier in the finder hood for critical focusing.
4. Cock the shutter. On most TLRs, you need to cock (charge) the shutter before it will fire. This is usually a lever on the side of the camera or the front panel. Some cameras couple the shutter cocking to the film advance, so advancing the film also cocks the shutter.
5. Shoot. Press the shutter release. You'll hear a quiet click — leaf shutters are much softer than the slap of an SLR mirror. That's it. You've made an exposure.
6. Advance the film. Turn the advance knob until the next frame number appears in the red window (or until the auto-stop mechanism catches). You're now on frame 2.
Repeat eleven more times.
Taking notes
Here's something digital photographers never have to think about: when your film comes back from the lab, the negatives contain no metadata. No aperture. No shutter speed. No ISO. No timestamp. Just images. If you want to know what settings you used on frame 7, you need to have written them down.
Some people carry a small notebook. Some use the notes app on their phone. TLR Companion handles this automatically: every time you capture a reference photo through the app (a quick phone snapshot of the scene you're about to shoot on the TLR), the app records the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, metering mode, EV, and any ND filter, tagged to the frame number on your current roll. You can add text notes or a voice memo on any frame.
At minimum, keep a record of the film stock and ISO, and note any exposures where you made a deliberate choice — pushed the exposure for shadows, compensated for backlight, intentionally overexposed. These notes are how you learn. Without them, every roll is a mystery when it comes back.
Finishing and unloading the roll
After frame 12, keep advancing the film. The paper backing extends past the last frame and needs to be wound fully onto the take-up spool. You'll feel the tension release as the paper pulls free from the supply spool. Keep winding until all the paper is tightly wound on the take-up spool.
Now you have a tightly wound roll of exposed film on the take-up spool, held closed by a paper seal with a sticky strip. Lick the seal (or use a bit of tape if the adhesive has died of old age) and press it down firmly. This seal is the only thing preventing the roll from unraveling and exposing your film to light.
Open the camera back. Remove the take-up spool with your exposed roll. The supply side now has an empty spool — leave it there or move it to the take-up side for your next roll.
Put the exposed roll back in its foil pouch if you still have it, or in any light-tight container. A zip-lock bag works. Don't leave it in direct sunlight or extreme heat. It's stable, but treat it with basic care until it's developed.
Getting it developed
You have three options for development:
Local lab. If you're lucky enough to have a film lab nearby, walk in and hand them the roll. Black and white development typically costs $8-15. Color (C-41) development costs $10-18. Many labs offer scanning to digital files as part of the service or as an add-on. Turnaround is usually 3-7 days.
Mail-order lab. Several excellent labs accept film by mail. You ship them your roll, they develop and scan it, and send back your negatives along with digital files via download link. Turnaround is typically 1-3 weeks including shipping. This is the most common option for photographers who don't live near a lab.
Develop at home. Black and white development is surprisingly accessible. You need a developing tank ($30-40), a changing bag ($20-30), and chemicals ($30-50 for enough to develop many rolls). The process takes about 30 minutes per roll. Color development (C-41) is also possible at home but requires more precise temperature control. Home development is a separate skill worth learning, but for your first roll, I'd recommend a lab so you can focus on the results rather than the chemistry.
When you drop off the roll, specify what you want: develop only (negatives returned, no scans), develop and scan (negatives plus digital files), or develop, scan, and print (all of the above plus physical prints, usually 4x4 or 5x5 for square negatives). For your first roll, develop and scan is the sweet spot. You get digital files to look at immediately and negatives to print from later if you want.
What you'll get back
A strip of negatives — twelve 6x6 cm frames on a continuous strip of film. If you shot black and white, the negatives will be inverted: bright areas are dark, dark areas are light. If you shot color negative, the negatives will be inverted and orange-masked, which makes them nearly impossible to evaluate by eye. This is normal. The scans will look correct.
The scans will be digital files — usually TIFF or JPEG — of each frame. Medium format scans are large. A good scan from a 6x6 negative can be 6000x6000 pixels or more. This is where the format's quality advantage becomes visible. Zoom in. Look at the grain structure. Look at the tonal range from deep shadows to bright highlights. Look at the way out-of-focus areas render. This is what medium format looks like.
Some frames will be good. Some won't. This is normal and expected. The important thing is to look at each frame and try to understand what happened.
- Frames that are too dark (underexposed) — thin, lacking shadow detail, maybe grainy. You needed more light on the film. Open the aperture or slow the shutter next time.
- Frames that are too light (overexposed) — washed out highlights, flat contrast. You gave the film too much light. Stop down or speed up the shutter. (Note: moderate overexposure on negative film often looks fine or even preferable, especially on Portra.)
- Frames that are out of focus — check whether the ground glass image was focused correctly, or if you bumped the focus after composing. TLR focus knobs are sometimes sensitive.
- Frames with light leaks (bright streaks or fogged edges) — the camera's light seals may need replacing. This is common on old cameras and is an inexpensive fix (new foam seals cost a few dollars and take 30 minutes to install).
- Frames with uneven exposure across the image — possible shutter issue. Old leaf shutters sometimes need a CLA (clean, lubricate, adjust) to fire accurately at all speeds.
If you kept notes, compare them to the results. Frame 5 was f/8 at 1/125 and came out perfectly exposed? Good — your metering was accurate in that situation. Frame 9 was f/5.6 at 1/60 in open shade and came out thin? You underexposed — the shade was darker than your meter thought, or the scene had a lot of dark tones that fooled the reflected meter. This is how you calibrate. Roll by roll, you build an intuition for light that no amount of reading can replace.
The twelve-frame cycle
Your first roll will teach you more about photography than your last thousand digital photos. Not because film is magic, but because twelve frames forces a discipline that infinite storage doesn't. You slowed down. You thought about each frame before you shot it. You made decisions about aperture, shutter speed, focus, and composition that a digital camera makes for you automatically. And when the negatives come back, you have twelve small moments of truth.
Some of them will surprise you. The frame you almost didn't take. The one where you weren't sure about the exposure but decided to trust the meter. The one where the reversed viewfinder made you see the scene differently than you expected.
Load another roll. Go again.
TLR Companion tracks your film rolls and records exposure data on every frame. When your negatives come back, you'll know exactly what settings you used.