film
n. C / Un. a thin material used inside old cameras to take photos. When light hits it, it records the image so you can print it later.
n. a thin, flexible strip of plastic coated with a light-sensitive emulsion for recording photographic images or motion pictures.
I need to buy a roll of film for my old camera.
Before digital cameras became popular, photographers had to develop their film in a dark room using special chemicals.
Despite the convenience of digital sensors, many professional photographers still prefer the organic grain and superior dynamic range offered by large-format black-and-white film.
From Middle English filme, from Old English filmen (“film, membrane, thin skin, foreskin”), from Proto-West Germanic filmīn-, from Proto-Germanic filmīn- (“thin skin, membrane”) (compare Proto-Germanic felma- (“skin, hide”)), from Proto-Indo-European pél-mo- (“membrane”), from pel- (“to cover, skin”). Cognate with Old Frisian filmene (“thin skin, human skin”), Middle Dutch velm, vilm (“fleece, film, membrane”), Old High German felm (“peel, skin, wrap”), Old English felma (in ǣġerfelma (“egg membrane”)). Related also to Dutch vel (“sheet, skin”), Borrowed from Latin vēlum (“a cloth, covering, awning, curtain, veil”). German Fell (“skin, hide, fur”), Swedish fjäll (“fur blanket, cloth, scale”), Norwegian fille (“rag, cloth”), Lithuanian plėvē (“membrane, scab”), Russian плева́ (plevá, “membrane”), Ancient Greek πέλμα (pélma, “sole of the foot”). More at fell. Sense of a thin coat of something is 1577, extended by 1845 to the coating of chemical gel on photographic plates. By 1895 this also meant the coating plus the paper or celluloid.
Uncountable when referring to the material in general; countable when referring to a specific roll or a motion picture.