A single 16mm x 100ft roll film (silver camera film) holds between 2,000 to 20,000 documents. The films can be stored in simple microfilm boxes although various types of sophisticated self-loading cartridges are also available.

A 16mm roll film system is the most variable and versatile microfilm system available. Roll film is used for retaining documents in chronological, alphabetical or numerical order. Alternatively, totally random filming may be indexed by bar coding and linking to a CAR (Computer Aided Retrieval) system.