Square medium format photography in digital

[Deardorff]

Decades of "God ordained the square" from Hasselblad and  they come out with a 645 digital camera. Pissed on their entire legacy.

Phase One and all the others fail to give us a 6x6 format.

These cameras are already priced in the stratosphere - why don't they go ahead and make what we have used for more than a half century?

[Telecaster]

One of the pleasures of using mirrorless cameras lies in being able to choose—and see in the EVF—different aspect ratios. m43 cameras offer a square option. The attached photo comes from an Olympus E-M5ii.

(Yeah, I know it's not medium format. But MF makers need to up their game.  )

-Dave-

[dwswager]

Decades of "God ordained the square" from Hasselblad and  they come out with a 645 digital camera. Pissed on their entire legacy.

Phase One and all the others fail to give us a 6x6 format.

These cameras are already priced in the stratosphere - why don't they go ahead and make what we have used for more than a half century?

They don't even offer a 1:1 crop mode and viewfinder indicators?  Hmm.  Haven't shot a Hassy in decades, but that seems foolish.

[MarkL]

Because magazines, billboards, shop ads, TVs, computer screens, paper sizes etc. are not square so it is a niche market while MF markers are struggling to even make full frame 645. Mamiya have been 6x7 for decades, not everyone used Hassys. The only reason 6x6 existed was because cameras with WLFs couldn’t work turned 90 degrees too well, I'm not sure God was part of it.

[Deardorff]

You start with the 6x6 square and offer the 645 'crop option'.

Hasselblad pissed all over its legacy.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I don't think they p.....d over legacy, the V system was sold in parallel with the H-system for long. I would have assumed that sales on the V-system were not enough to maintain a skilled work force.

Regarding sensors, any vendor is dependent on available sensor designs and they are usually not square. Developing a 56x56 sensor for Hasselblad would probably be very expensive.

The viewfinder masks I have for my P45+ have markings for horisontal and vertical and in effect also 37x37 mm. I also often shoot two images and stitch, if a more quadratic format would be needed.

I would not be surprised to see square sensors on mirrorless cameras. There is no reason to base digital camera formats on old film sizes. With DSLRs the mirror box pretty much defines the maximum sensor size.

Best regards
Erik

You start with the 6x6 square and offer the 645 'crop option'.

Hasselblad pissed all over its legacy.

[dwswager]

I would not be surprised to see square sensors on mirrorless cameras. There is no reason to base digital camera formats on old film sizes. With DSLRs the mirror box pretty much defines the maximum sensor size.

Best regards
Erik

One must ask the important question:  Why were those aspect ratios selected for film cameras in the first place.  It was not arbitrary.  No single format is great or even useful for all type of photography.   

Now that we are getting higher pixel count sensors, it would be nice if camera makers would implement different aspect options either in the viewfinder only or in actual file crop selected by the user.

[Petrus]

One must ask the important question:  Why were those aspect ratios selected for film cameras in the first place.  It was not arbitrary. 

6x6 probably came to being with twin lens reflex cameras. With those it was impractical/impossible to turn the camera sideways, and square format gave the maximum picture area. Then the picture was supposed to be cropped to the shape needed, and I suspect most shots by professionals were in the end, for publishing. So 6x6 was not an aesthetic choice by the manufacturers, but purely practical. For Hasselblad it meant simpler bodies and backs with no need for rotation. Only later the purist crowd appeared, and all photos had to be printed full frame and preferably with black frame around it.

While I did have and use Hasselblad film cameras in the eighties-nineties, I preferred Pentax and Mamiya 6x7 models, which gave better IQ after cropping (which was not usually needed for 6x7, but for 6x6 in most cases). After all a cropped Hassy frame was only half of that from Pentax 67.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

My reasoning is that the sensor should fill the image circle of the lens. For the established 24x35 mm that is 43 mm, so most lenses are calculated for 43 mm coverage. A square format allows for a lot of different crops, but to be able to give 24x36 and 36x24 the sensor are should be 36x36.

On the other hand, the largest square fitting within 43 mm image circle would be 30.4x30.4 mm so a 36x31 mm sensor would also make sense. it could offer 36x24 -- to 31x31 and everything in between.

If you are prepared to introduce a new lens programme you can really choose your sensor size. This is what Leica has made with the S2, essentially. BTW, by choosing a small size sensor they can use a lot of existing MF lenses.

Best regards
Erik

One must ask the important question:  Why were those aspect ratios selected for film cameras in the first place.  It was not arbitrary.  No single format is great or even useful for all type of photography.   

Now that we are getting higher pixel count sensors, it would be nice if camera makers would implement different aspect options either in the viewfinder only or in actual file crop selected by the user.

[Ajoy Roy]

Decades of "God ordained the square" from Hasselblad and  they come out with a 645 digital camera. Pissed on their entire legacy.

Phase One and all the others fail to give us a 6x6 format.

These cameras are already priced in the stratosphere - why don't they go ahead and make what we have used for more than a half century?

If I remember it right Hasselblad propagated the square format as one format that could be cropped in any direction depending on the intended use. No need to rotate the camera!

The reason that there is no digital camera with a square 60x60 size is that none were commissioned by camera manufacturers. The lagest size used was the 16MP square sensor, but that was not even 40mm on each side. On the other hand there are quite a few large square sensors of 60x60 and 100x100 and larger square sizes used by aerospace agencies, but no one used them for still cameras.

With current sensor densities, you can easily crop the 35mm or 645mm to square format using a mask to frame and PP to crop.
. 24MP (6000x4000) sensor becomes a 16MP
. 36MP (7360x4912) becomes a 24MP
. 80MP (10,328 x 7,760) becomes 60MP

So in effect the arguments used by Hasselblad for square format are reversed now!

[Ajoy Roy]

One must ask the important question:  Why were those aspect ratios selected for film cameras in the first place.  It was not arbitrary.  No single format is great or even useful for all type of photography.   

Now that we are getting higher pixel count sensors, it would be nice if camera makers would implement different aspect options either in the viewfinder only or in actual file crop selected by the user.

1. The 24x36 format for 135 film came because the camera manufacturer wanted to use the 135 film stock used by movie industry
2. The 60x60 was convenient for TLR. The base stock was 60mm wide and square format would need no rotation
3. The 60x70 to 60x90 or wider was camera manufacturer's answer for larger area of film (hence better resolution for wide prints) using relatively inexpensive and easily available 120 roll film
4. 5x4, 5x7 and 8x10 sheet film just gave more area, hence lower magnification requirement (translates to relatively sharper images) for a give print size. In fact if I am not wrong, many magazines used 8x10 LF sheets at 1:1 (contact) prints.

Regarding various aspect ratios, there are two school of thought
a) Those who would like to crop the image in camera. The only advantage is image file size, and at times burst speed
b) Those who would like to crop in PP. The advantage is that you can crop to exactly the size you want

With high megapixels, if you are generating images for the media - web and magazine prints, then there is enough megapixels to crop aggressively. At 300 DPI and 8x10 magazine spread requires 2400x3000 pixels or about 7.2 MP, a double spread 15MP,

[Petrus]

1. The 24x36 format for 135 film came because the camera manufacturer wanted to use the 135 film stock used by movie industry

This does not explain the aspect ratio though. My guess is that 8 perforations was chosen as a nice number, avoiding odd number 7 and 6 perforations would have given too square an aspect ratio. So we are stuck with 2:3, which is bit too wide...

[BJL]

1. The 24x36 format for 135 film came because the camera manufacturer wanted to use the 135 film stock used by movie industry

The 135 film roll only sets one dimension, roughly 24mm dimension across the roll (once room is left for frame numbers); it can be and is used with various lengths "along the roll", such as the roughly 24x18mm of early motion picture formats.  So why mostly 36mm for stills?
a) When Barnack was designing the first Leica cameras, he decided that the frame needed to be bigger than 24x18mm movie frame to get acceptable image quality, and doubling from 18 to 36 [edit: 8 perforations as Petrus points out] was one easy option.
b) But other shapes were tried at times and 36x24mm mostly won out, so again, why?

My guess is that 3:2 was at the wide end of the popular shape range, so all the other options tried were narrower (EDIT: 7 perforations for about 32x24 was one, IIRC) and so those shapes could be got with a horizontal crop.  Using instead a shape like 32x24 meant that when you wanted the wider 3:2 shape, you cropped vertically, so got a smaller frame.

One quirk with this history is that for many decades, most prints from 36x24mm frames were cropped to less wide shapes: 5"x4", 5"x3 1/2", 7" x 5", 10" x 8", etc.

2. The 60x60 was convenient for TLR. The base stock was 60mm wide and square format would need no rotation

I agree about the role of the TLR origin, and before that, some of the first medium format cameras, Kodak Brownies, used a square frame for similar reasons.
A minor correction: "6x6" format is actually 56x56mm (coming from something like 2 1/4" wide roll designed by Kodak): names like 6x6, 6x7 etc. come from rounding up to the nearest cm.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

This does not explain the aspect ratio though.

The explanation is really simple (from Wikipedia):

Instead of the exposure plates used in past Leitz cameras, the Leica used a standardized film strip, adapted from 35 mm Eastman Kodak roll-film. Barnack decided that the 18 x 24 mm (3:4 aspect ratio) standard movie frame was not large enough for good still photo quality with the films of the day and doubled the frame size to 24 x 36 mm (2:3 aspect ratio), with the image horizontal instead of vertical.

So it was just a simple doubling of the cine frame size, to achieve a better quality, but still small enough to allow using a lighter camera. The availability of film stock was also convenient.

Cheers,
Bart

[Telecaster]

I don't care much for the 3:2 aspect ratio when it comes to printing/display, but now that 16:9 screens are standard-ish I like that 3:2 throws away less info than 4:3 when cropped to 16:9. In fact I started off using the A7r in 16:9 mode but have since switched to the full frame, composing loosely with a 16:9 horizontal or (usually) 4:3 vertical final photo in mind. Which is pretty much what I've always done when using 35mm film.

I do like using the square frame sometimes, but I prefer seeing it in the finder as I'm snapping away. So I use either an m43 camera or my lovely Rolleiflex T.

-Dave-

[BobShaw]

Sounds like you have been partying since 1999 and just checked the market.

Square may be good for some things but not good for others e.g., landscapes. Anyway, all cropping is done not he computer so what does it matter. Having both 35mm and medium format I think Hasselblad is cheaper now than it ever was, even not allowing for inflation. A 1D or D3 with a good lens won't leave much change from $10K and Blads start about 14. A 6x6 sensor would be a lot more expensive.

[Herbc]

All this talk of square format makes me plan to get out my venerable Pentacon Six mount Hartblei and get in the field.  One of the reasons I like the sony's is because of being able to shoot waist level.

[dwswager]

All this talk of square format makes me plan to get out my venerable Pentacon Six mount Hartblei and get in the field.  One of the reasons I like the sony's is because of being able to shoot waist level.

I shoot waist level with my Nikon all the time.  In fact, my tripod goes almost to ground level! 

[Iluvmycam]

I'd love for them to come out with a FF 6x6 back for my SWC. 6MP is fine for me and keep it under $2500. I did a lot of work with the 6x6 back in the day.

nsfw

http://hasselbladswc.tumblr.com/

[Alan Klein]

The Mamiya Rotating Back RB-67 overcame the problem of having to somehow rotate the entire camera.  Just rotate the back that held the film yet the camera does not have to be mpved on the tripod.  It was a neat solution to the problem.  Of course, the penalty for this ease to get a 6x7 is the camera is heavier than a Hassie or TLR.