The film is fully housed in a plastic cartridge, that also registers the image when the film is advanced. There is a continuous backing paper, and the frame number and film type is visible through a window at the rear of the cartridge. The film does not need to be rewound, and is very simple to load and unload. The film is pre-exposed with frame lines and numbers, a feature intended to make it easier and more efficient for photofinishers to print.
The 110 cartridge was introduced by Kodak in 1972 together with their Pocket Instamatic cameras. The new pocket-sized cameras became immediately popular, and in a short time displaced competing subminiature cameras, such as the Minolta 16 series, from the market.
Canon, Voigtlander, Minox, Rollei, Pentax, Minolta and others, as well as Kodak, offered sophisticated and expensive 110 cameras with excellent multi-element, focusing lenses and precise, electronically controlled exposure systems. These cameras were capable of making high quality images on 110 film. Some of these cameras were quite small, and still hold appeal to enthusiasts of subminiature photography.
However, the overwhelming majority of 110 cameras were (and still are) cheaply made, with mediocre lenses and only rudimentary exposure control. The small negative size of 110 film makes it difficult to enlarge successfully, and for these reasons, the 110 format is associated with prints that are often rather blurry and unsharp. This gave rise to the misconception that the cartridge itself is incapable of holding film flat enough for making high-quality negatives.
The 110 cartridge, as specified by Kodak, has a plastic tab on one end. Camera designers had the option of using this tab to sense film speed, enabling sophisticated cameras to switch between high and low speed film. A short tab indicated high speed film, and a long tab indicated low speed film. Kodak left it to the film manufacturer to decide which film speeds were high or low. Only a few expensive cameras took advantage of this feature.
The designation 110 was originally applied by Kodak to a roll film format introduced in 1898, producing 5" x 4" images. That film was discontinued in October, 1929.
As of the year 2003, 110 is still manufactured by Kodak and others, but is rapidly approaching obsolescense.
International standard: ISO 13450