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Author Topic: Nikon Strategy  (Read 14129 times)

dbarthel

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #20 on: January 14, 2003, 09:10:46 am »

Ah, but the field advantages of a smaller sensor and effective focal length multiplier continue to exist. I've come to like the 1.6 multiplier of my D60, and am really hoping that the EOS 3D or what ever it is called will not be full frame but somewhere between 1.3x and the current D60 1.6x. Reasons include using the sweet spot of the lens, and better reach for telephoto applications.

Dan
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BJL

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« Reply #21 on: January 16, 2003, 03:30:46 pm »

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The ratio of 2 to 3 lends itself pretty well to historical compositional values. ... I'm referring to the 'Rule of Thirds', 'The Golden Mean' ...
Why then is virtually every standard enlargement bigger than 4"x6" cropped to a squarer shape than the 2:3 (1.5) ratio of 35mm's 24mmx36mm frame?

The common non-snapshot print paper shapes are 5:7 (ratio 1.4) , 8:10 and 16x20 (ratio 1.25), 11x14 (ratio 1.27), plus the newer "European" or "metric" A3 and A4 papers of ratio approximately 1.41 (actually the square root of 2). You see the same story in the range of large format and medium format cameras, where 6x9 is definitely at the "panoramic" end of the range. The same is also seen in artists' sketch pads and pre-stretched canvases, where the most common shapes seem to be 4:5 and 3:4 (9"x12", 12"x16" etc.), and while shapes of 2:3 and up exist, they are far less common.  Everywhere I look other than snapshots, shapes in the range 1.25 to about 1.4 are predominant, and 3:4 (1.33) fits reasonably well.

Of course I like panaramas too, so I have no objections to such longer shapes being available, but I was talking about a convenient mainstream compromise shape.


The Rule of Thirds has nothing to do with the Golden Mean; that guideline works fairly nicely with a variety of image shapes. Prints with approximately the shape of the Golden Ratio (about 1.62) are not very common.

As far as shapes with interesting geometrical properties, I like those "metric" papers A3, A4 etc., because when you cut a sheet in half, the two new pieces are the same shape as the original. Very convenient in the darkroom I would think. (The nearby 5"x7" happens to be my personal favorite shape for verticals.)
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Ray

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #22 on: January 17, 2003, 07:39:31 pm »

JBL,
In other words, there's a plethora of different formats that seem to have arisen for mostly practical, economic and accidental reasons, and none of them would appear to have any over all advantage from a purely esthetic point of view. Forget the Golden Mean, is that what you're saying?

Of course, the nature of the subject affects the format. Portraiture tends to fit a 4/3rds format and landscapes often require a more elongated format than even 35mm can provide. At the moment, photographers are well served in having a range of format options from square to 6cm x 17cm. If you can afford the camera, there's hardly a format not catered for.

But this is not the case with digital where the 35mm proportions still dominate, even for digital MF backs. Whatever the original reasons for 35mm becoming popular (and they appear to be economic) the fact remains that it's a good compromise between the extremes of square and panorama. Just a moderate amount of cropping gets you most formats.

The great disadvantage of the proposed 4/3rds format is that it's not only a much smaller format requiring a huge enlargement for a good size print, but becomes smaller still with the heavy cropping required for many landscapes. I can't see any over all advantage in moving away from the 35mm proportions (except perhaps to a completely square format to more fully exploit the lens's image circle) and I still find it significant that the Golden Mean ratio of 1 : 1.618 is slap in the middle of the two most popular formats - widescreen TV and 35mm, and I would say that widescreen's 1 : 1.78 is here to stay for many, many years.
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Ray

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« Reply #23 on: January 17, 2003, 10:22:45 pm »

JBL,
You certainly put up a convincing argument. I have not investigated in the world of painting, the preponderance of one format over another. I've got no further than observing there's a huge variety of formats, so for the time being I'll have to accept your word for that. But even if it proves to be true that the 4/3rds format dominates the world of painting, the question is still open in my mind as to whether there are practical, economic and/or traditional reasons for this, rather than esthetic considerations. Artists are subject to economic realities like everyone. For all I know, there are 'practical' preferences of the buying public that painters might, even unconsciously, cater to. This might have to do with the rectangular and fragmented shape of the average living room wall where windows and doorways leave spaces that are more suited to a particular format. One of my favourite photos, that I painstakingly created by stitching images together, is 96" x 13". I've often thought of marketing this photo. I sold one copy to the local council, which gave me a bit of encouragement. But I really think it's too long for the average living room. The resolution is there to make it 192'' x 26". (Any offers?)

I find from my own practice, that most of the cropping I do is to fit A4 or Super A3. Paper is expensive. Sometimes I can't avoid it and end up wasting a 3" wide strip along the length of Super A3. Sometimes I think, well if I make that a 4" strip, I can use it, but then I'm compromising (in my view) the artistic merit of the photo - and so it goes on. Practical realities.
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dbarthel

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« Reply #24 on: December 16, 2002, 09:50:21 am »

[font color=\'#000000\']In your defense, die size is ever increasing, so QA standards are allowing fewer defects in a given area, which means more good chips off a given die, and thus lower overall chip costs.

Dan[/font]
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Petru Lauric

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #25 on: December 17, 2002, 04:59:39 pm »

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[font color=\'#000000\']Hi Petru,

somehow what you say will also apply on the smaller chips, because the image circle will be smaller and then you get the same problems of steep angle on the smaller chip.

If you have 16mm wide angle on 35mm full frame and 16mm on 3/4" chip you have the same angle, or am I wrong in my thinking?

Just make a sketch on paper and you will see.[/font]
[font color=\'#000000\']I just made a sketch on paper  And my conclusion is that the angle is less steep if the distance between the (redesigned) lens and the (smaller) sensor is the same. Of course, if you scaled everything (the sensor, the lens, and the distance between the lens and the sensor) you'd have the same geometry as before.

Sorry if my assumptions are incorrect, I'm not an optics engineer ...[/font]
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Stéphane Bosman

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #26 on: December 20, 2002, 07:49:54 pm »

[font color=\'#000000\']Is it possible that Nikon could be trapped by the diameter of its mount ? I mean, Contax changed its mount mainly to have a bigger diameter in order to effectively cover full frame sensors. And when Canon created the EOS mount, it made it huge compared to anything else that was on the market at that time.

I remember reading in 'Leica Lens Compendium' by Erwin Puts that one big reason for Leica to move from the 39mm mount to the M mount of the M3 was that it needed a larger diameter (albeit now small compared to today standards, but still big compared to the film/flange distance).

So it might be pay back time for Canon and grief time for Nikon and its pseudo F compatibility.[/font]
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samirkharusi

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« Reply #27 on: December 28, 2002, 12:32:41 am »

[font color=\'#000000\']Is this a myth that is having a life of its own? That ultrawide lenses have a problem because their cone angle is so great that the rays strike at too acute an angle? I believe it was Olympus(?) who raised the issue in their ads for lenses needing to be specially designed for digital? DSLRs with mirrors for viewing are a completely different ball game, to the ZSLRs, IMHO. The cone angle hitting the sensor is determined to a large extent by how far the rearmost lens element is from the sensor. In a non-reflex-mirror camera, like a mythical full-format Olympus non-mirror-reflex body, a 14mm focal length lens may have its rearmost element almost kissing the sensor, hence the Olympus ads. And of course you may have huge problems with rays arriving at very acute angles on the edges of the sensor. In a mirrored DSLR, however, the rearmost lens element has to clear the mirror when it flips up. The rearmost element is very far from the sensor (retrofocus lens designs) hence this issue of acute angles is no big deal. I would hazard a guess that no matter how short the focal length of the retrofocus lens is, the cone angle business is never "much" worse than for a 50mm lens. Typical 50mm designs seem to have their rearmost lens elements very close to the mirror when it flips up. Problems with vignetting and Chromatic Aberration remain with ultrawides however, but Jonathan Sachs  (Michael's friend) has provided us with a one-click solution for each of these in Picture Window Pro...[/font]
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Ray

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #28 on: December 30, 2002, 10:16:30 am »

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[font color=\'#000000\']I shouldn't have used the term oversampling. At least in audo, oversampling takes place during playback, not recording.[/font]
[font color=\'#000000\']Bill,
I don't believe this is true. The latest DVD Audio formats record at enormously oversampled rates - 196KHz for one format and 2.8Ghz for the other, Sony's SACD system. But that's a 1 bit system, I believe.

I don't know how far analogies with audio can stretch, but some of the terms and mathematical principles seem to be similar. Not sure how you arrive at 4 micron spacing for a 24MP full frame sensor. The Schneider Optics article you referred to earlier mentions 6 microns in relation to 80lp/mm and 24MP.

BTW, some of these point-and-shoot cameras do appear to have fairly good lenses. At least, that's what many of the reviewers claim. I recently bought the 4MP Nikon 4300 as a present for someone. A few test images I took appeared remarkably sharp. I would say capable of being blown up to Super A3. My main objection was, easily blown out highlights and much more noise than I'm used to with the D60. Well, actually I had a lot more objections when comparing it to the D60. The two cameras are not in the same league, but the lenses in these tiny cameras are not necessarily so poor that they're limited by diffraction. The Nikon 4300 has a 'real' aperture range of F2.8 - F4.9. Not much chance of reaching the diffraction limit at those apertures.[/font]
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bjanes

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #29 on: December 30, 2002, 09:39:57 pm »

[font color=\'#000000\']Ray,

Your assertion concerning resolution as a function of the f number is true. I don't know how to reconcile this with Mr. Koren's statement. Perhaps I misunderstood it. Hopefully, a more knowledgable person will help me out.

I was confused by the relationship of the f number to the diffraction spot (Airy disk). It is related to the f number and is independent of the focal length. For green light (500 nm) it is 2.2 microns at f2, 4.5 at f4, 12 at f 11and 18 at f16. I had assumed that it would be bad if the spot were larger than the pixel element of the sensor, but this doesn't correspond the resolution figures in lp/mm. I give up!

Bill[/font]
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Dan Sroka

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« Reply #30 on: January 06, 2003, 01:06:13 am »

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35mm stuff is scary (try pointing a Canon 70-200 zoom at someone!).
Off topic: what was that old comedy movie where the spy confused his two gadgets: a camera disguised as a rifle, and a rifle disguised as a camera?  :D
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dimiz

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #31 on: January 13, 2003, 01:10:35 pm »

I think Nikon's move is wise.
A lot of talk about "full-frame" sensors. Why? Because lots of people have their old lenses and would like to use them at their normal characteristics.
But digital is a totally new medium. The difference is bigger then it was back when AF appeared. I don't think it is smart to bend all this new medium, the cameras and the lenses, to fit the characteristics of the old medium.
Two things are obvious: big sensors will continue to cost lots of money, as Moore's law does not apply to the size of the chip, but only the pixel count. The other is that if I have a camera with a sensor of a certain size, I would prefer to buy lenses that are designed for that sensor. Why would I carry lots of heavy glass that I never use? Besides, the design of a digital lens may (and will!) have to differ from the design of a film lens.
There is no need for "full-frame" sensors. Even the expression "full-frame" is absurd. Digital is a new medium, should set up a standard sensor size that provides the best price/quality.
Replacing film has lead to a general reduction in sensor size. P&S cameras are somwhere in the sub-aps range, SLRs (absurd as they are in the digital age) around the 1.5 sensors of today, and MF around the 35mm frame.
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HC_Earwicker

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« Reply #32 on: January 13, 2003, 04:51:13 pm »

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People seem to forget that 35mm film was not created as a still picture format. It's spectacular success has probably been due to the fact that the cameras are about optimum size for hand holding by most people; certainly by the males who previously were the main users. Those who have a great vision about the opportunity to throw off old restrictions from the past are deluded. There were no such restrictions. By the late 70's Pentax, with their M Series, out-miniaturised the Olympus OM Series. Yet big Nikons and Canons remained popular. Don't men like their big EOS 1V's and F5's? Really? Pentax MX's and Olympus OM's were beautiful cameras, ideal for portability AND had the same size sensor as their larger competitors. Now the suggestion is that folk will clamour for a sensor half the size of what's not broke! Kodak have a great track record on new small formats. It's a bit of an obsession; 110, Disk, APS, ...  Don't be surprised if 4:3 goes the same way. Suppose Canon announces a full frame D90 at a sensible priice. Who will want to sell their Canon gear to pick up an inferior 4:3 Kodak?
I really don't know if the 4/3 format will succeed but the comparisons being made to other "smaller" formats are not quite valid. A lot of the smaller formats failed because the technology didn't produce satisfactory results or the execution (from a business point of view) wasn't good enough. APS, I think, was a case of unfortunate timing - digital cameras came along at about the same time. Had it been competing against 35mm alone, it might well have succeeded.

If full-frame sensors continue to be vastly more expensive than the smaller ones used in the 4/3 format and if the lenses of the 4/3 format can be made significantly cheaper than full-frame lenses, there is no reason why the 4/3 format shouldn't succeed. Picture quality isn't everything - if that were the case, medium format would have killed off 35mm. The 35mm format "succeeded" because it offered smaller size, lower weight and acceptably good picture quality for a significantly lower price than medium format. No reason why 4/3 shouldn't succeed if it can offer those same advantages.

 - HCE
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MatthewCromer

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« Reply #33 on: January 15, 2003, 09:23:57 pm »

The real driving force for smaller than full-frame imagers will be the long-lens crowd, both old and new.

A 4/3" sensor gets almost twice the milage out of a 400mm lens as a "Full Frame" sensor.  Glass for smaller sensor imagers is lighter, faster, cheaper.

Anyone who wants to hike and take images of birds, animals, etc. is a potential customer of a 4/3 system, a fast 300mm lens, and a TC.  The poor schmuck who has to cart 40 pounds and $10,000 of heavy tripod, BWL 600mm, Wimberly mount to get the same coverage is going to be at a severe disadvantage.  While some are willing to shoot from the roadside, others need reasonable gear that can be carried for miles and doesn't cost as much as a very nice used automobile.
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Ray

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2003, 10:27:45 pm »

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The two "longest" formats on your list are moving picture formats, a very different issue than still images
JBL,
I forgot to ask. In what way are moving picture formats a very different issue?
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Petru Lauric

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #35 on: December 17, 2002, 11:53:32 am »

[font color=\'#000000\']I read somewhere that the 35mm format wideangle lenses might have certain problems when working with full frame CCD/CMOS sensors. More specifically, some of the rays of light come from a very steep angle - vs the perpendicular to the surface of the sensor - and therefore the affected sensor pixels (e.g. the ones close to the edges of the sensor) will not "charge" fully.

I'm not sure if this is really the case, but I think that there is some truth to that. If it is a serious issue then maybe Nikon is right, from a strictly technical point of view. Oh, and let's not forget that both Nikon and Canon couldn't care less about their customers' so-called "investments" in lenses. What they want us to do is B-U-Y as much as possible, not continue to use the old lenses for the rest of our lives!!![/font]
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bjanes

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #36 on: December 29, 2002, 08:27:28 pm »

[font color=\'#000000\']Ray,

I shouldn't have used the term oversampling. At least in audo, oversampling takes place during playback, not recording.

If your output requires 40 lp/mm you could quadruple the pixel density of the sensor and effectively sample at 80 lp/mm. To control alaising in this fashon Kodak would have to use 4 micron pixel spacing, quadrupling the pixel count of their sensor. The small sensor point and shoot cameras do not need antialaising filters because the lens+sensor MTF at full resolution is already so low that alaising is not noticable. If these cameras had better lenses used at apertures above the diffraction limit, I presume alaising would then appear.

Perhaps, as you say, some of the alaising can be removed by software without seriously degrading the resolution of the image.

Bill[/font]
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BJL

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« Reply #37 on: January 02, 2003, 12:00:20 pm »

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[font color=\'#000000\']
Quote from: bjanes,Dec. 30 2002,18:11
I've been under the impression that diffraction is a function only of F stop and that any lens at F4 is theoretically capable of resolving (according to Rayleigh's Law) something like 1500/4 or maybe 1000/4 lp/mm. Taking the more conservative figure, that's 250 lp/mm. Not bad for a relatively cheap lens. Now, if only the lens designers/manufacturers could do this with 35mm lenses - ie. optimum performance at F4 instead of the usual F8!![/font
[font color=\'#000000\']I believe you are right about difraction spot size: the Airy diameter of the diffraction spot is "(aperture ratio) times 1.22microns" for green light (wavelength 0.5micron).

The problem is that for larger image circles, it gets harder to achieve a given sharpness in terms on lp/mm, as aberrations are harder to control. (Though Norm Koren sugest f/4 as an upper limit above which aberration limitation sets in, suggesting that this is independent of image circle size.)

For example, expensive pro grade prime medium format lenses are commonly less sharp than even the best "consumer" 35m zoom lenses in terms of lp/mm; the larger format wins in overall resolution by having "more mm of film" and so more of what really counts: "line pairs per picture height and width". (Check the extensive MTF lens test data at http://www.photodo.com/nav/prodindex.html)

Likewise, moderately priced compact digital camera lenses with about 11mm or smaller image circles are sharper in lp/mm than many pro 35mm zoom lenses: digicam test results often show well over 120lp/mm while pro 35mm zoom lenses are typically back at 60lp/mm or less. Clearly 35mm designers are still pushing to improve, so it must be genuinely easier for the smaller image circle designs.[/font]
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Ray

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Nikon Strategy
« Reply #38 on: January 15, 2003, 06:17:45 am »

I can't see any problem with the 35mm format. I don't see any historical baggage that needs to be got rid of. The ratio of 2 to 3 lends itself pretty well to historical compositional values. Is it these values that some folks want to discard? I'm referring to the 'Rule of Thirds', 'The Golden Mean', 'The Golden Section', 'The Golden Rectangle', or whatever name you want to give it. The ancient Greeks discovered that the proportions 5 to 8 are visually pleasing. 35mm is 5 to 7 1/2. Pretty close. Essentially, a rectangle in the proportions of 5 to 8 has the interesting property that the ratio of the short side to the long side is almost the same as the ratio of the long side to the sum of both sides. (ie. 5 to 8 is approximately the same as 8 to 13.) If you're stuck for compositional inspiration, you can always fall back on this rule. Divide the 35mm frame into 9 equal rectangles and place objects within them, if possible connected by a diagonal flow from left to right, the way we read. Should look good.
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BJL

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« Reply #39 on: January 17, 2003, 12:14:20 pm »

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I'm no authority on the origin of these terms, so if you have information on this, share it with us.
I can answer some of the questions; I invite corrections on the history though.

The Golden Ratio gives a rectangle such that if you add a square on the long side, the new rectangle is the same shape. This leads somehow to the biological/mathematical fact that spiralling growth tends to settle on this shape.

The history I have heard of the 3:4 and 2:3 ratios, plus wider ratios for moving pictures, is this:

a) Early movies settled on the 35mm format of Edison and Eastman, with a 3:4 shape (24mm across the film, 18mm along it).

 TV copied this shape for obvious reasons; computer monitors copied TV's, early digital cameras used sensors originally designed for TV; hence the persistence of 3:4.

c) The 35mm movie frame was deemed too small for the higher quality standards of a stationary image, and Leica decided on the solution of "double frame": two movie frames became one 35mm still frame of 24mmx36mm. (Thus the so-called "half-frame" was the original, sometimes called "single frame" in older photography books.)

d) The movie industry reacted to TV by differentiating themselves with wider formats often just by cropping the frame to less than 18mm high). TV is only now responding with HDTV.

e) For many decades, almost every 35mm film print was cropped to a squarer shape; even standard prints used to be something like 3 1/2" by 5" (a ratio about 1.43) up until about the 1970's; probably originally a convenience based on halfing a 5"x7" sheet. (Why not quarter an 8"x10" sheet to get 4"x5" prints? I suspect that shape was considered a bit too square for snapshots, with too much sky and foreground in the average landscape.)

f) In the early, contact printing days of photography, various film sizes were somewhat commonly used, and the main ones I know of are 8 by 10, 5 by 7, 6 1/2 by 8 1/2, and 6 1/4 by 8 1/4.  All are squarer than 2:3, and the last two get very close to 3:4.

g) The one new photographic frame shape adopted "from scratch" in recent times and widely accepted by serious photogaphers is 645 medium format; actually most brands are 41.5mm by 56mm, or almost exactly 3:4. Strangely, it is often said wrongly that its shape exactly fits 8x10 prints; in fact it is close but a bit "longer".


Given all the historical contraints in photographic equipment and printing supplies, I looked at painting and drawing supplies where shapes are far more flexible and there are many more choices of size and shape used; this lead to my observation that 4:5 and 3:4 are the mainstream favorites, with a huge array of other options appropriate for various situations of course.


Finally, the new 4/3" format is only a new size, preserving the predominant digital frame shape of 4:3 while about doubling the 2/3" format that is currently the upper limit in compact digital cameras; and with a cute double meaning in the name.
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