Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: eronald on August 18, 2018, 12:13:31 am
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Isn't it time we got the real MF "look" back?
Isn't it time we finally got what it says on the box?
Isn't it time we could make those old lenses useful again in spite of their low lpi resolution?
Sensor prices have gone down, and I would expect the cost of a 54x54 sensor to be the same as a 48x36 a few years ago.
Hassy's superb X1D can take the old V lenses. Maybe they could now finally make a V1D with a film-frame sized square sensor?
The Hasselblad VD name may be a non-starter ...
Edmund
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August 23:) ???
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We're not.
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While I don't doubt Sony could make a 54x54, the questions are why, for who and at what cost? For the V series Hasselblads? CFV-50c has been discontinued for a while. What other existing system would be able to take advantage of the larger sensor? The last V mount lens was made when? I love the idea of the V1D, but if they can't use the existing sensors, the custom chip has to be supported by one camera. Plus you'd have to convince Ziess to get back in to making the larger lenses. That's a whole lot of money for how big of a market?
Hass & Phase would both have to do a new body and lenses when both would be better served focusing on 33x44 stuff. Fuji and Pentax don't have anything using the existing 54x40. The new Sony MF chips should satisfy anyone looking at 35mm stuff wondering about the MP advantages. The V1D would get lots of love, but it would have to compete with the X1D on price.
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pretty much all existing MF lenses covering a sensor that size would be useless, they just aren't good enough for digital capture...
so someone would have to not only make a new body, which would have to be mirrorless btw but a completely new lens line...
hasselblad and fuji just now made a statement with new lens lines that 33x44 is good and big enough....
is anyone else still even making lenses?
phase is hanging on and unless they can come out with a mirrorless soon, they might as well concentrate on niche products for science and make the drone stuff (although i am sure DJI will say something about that...) and C1 of course....
nikon is rumored to release the Z mount which is bigger and might be big enough for 33x44...
so i honestly feel we are further away then ever....from 54x54...
i do think that there might be hope now to finally abandon the idiotic 24x36 film constraints which make zero sense now....
but again: sony is now a leader, they finally have a really solid lens line up.....for FF....
no matter what nikon or canon will come out with, it will take years to really take on and to have full lens line ups....
i really do like the 33x44 sensor size...big enough, nice format, plenty of space for big pixels AND high resolution.....and probably still easy and cheap enough to make for higher end systems....and all tech advancements that mirrorless brings....yes, the lenses need to be bigger, but not too big to handle serious AF performance.....
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ok maybe we need 48x72.
a nice modern-day SuperIkonta or Plaubel Makina,
2x pixels in every dimension
A considerable improvement in DR.
What I'm trying to say is that the Hassy isn't really worth designing a whole camera and lenses for at 33x44, the larger sensor is not going to make that much of an improvement over a stabilised 35mm camera that can do handheld superresolution like the Sony A7R3. And the look of an expensive F2.8 lens on 33x44 isn't really going to improve over a cheaper F1.4 on 35mm. But if the sensor were upscaled a bit the intrinsic advantages of MF would come back into play.
Edmund
pretty much all existing MF lenses covering a sensor that size would be useless, they just aren't good enough for digital capture...
so someone would have to not only make a new body, which would have to be mirrorless btw but a completely new lens line...
hasselblad and fuji just now made a statement with new lens lines that 33x44 is good and big enough....
is anyone else still even making lenses?
phase is hanging on and unless they can come out with a mirrorless soon, they might as well concentrate on niche products for science and make the drone stuff (although i am sure DJI will say something about that...) and C1 of course....
nikon is rumored to release the Z mount which is bigger and might be big enough for 33x44...
so i honestly feel we are further away then ever....from 54x54...
i do think that there might be hope now to finally abandon the idiotic 24x36 film constraints which make zero sense now....
but again: sony is now a leader, they finally have a really solid lens line up.....for FF....
no matter what nikon or canon will come out with, it will take years to really take on and to have full lens line ups....
i really do like the 33x44 sensor size...big enough, nice format, plenty of space for big pixels AND high resolution.....and probably still easy and cheap enough to make for higher end systems....and all tech advancements that mirrorless brings....yes, the lenses need to be bigger, but not too big to handle serious AF performance.....
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Never. And I suspect that you know that, and just want to revive this perennial debate; maybe as a distraction from the recent flood of 36x24mm mirrorless system speculation and debates. The "larger than 36x24mm by enough to be significant" format that you wish for is "645" (54x42mm or thereabouts), as all successful/surviving medium format makers settled on by the end of the film era, and which is the upper limit for support by any current lens system.
Also, isn't it time to acknowledge that square is dead, as again all successful/surviving MF systems worked out decades ago? That doom started with the ability to rotate for verticals.
"Technically possible" can be very different than "commercially viable".
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They say never say never, but I suspect never.
There are so many people that think we don't need more than 36 x 24 and so we are probably lucky they make 33 x 44.
If I want square I just crop.
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Never. And I suspect that you know that, and just want to revive this perennial debate; maybe as a distraction from the recent flood of 36x24mm mirrorless system speculation and debates. The "larger than 36x24mm by enough to be significant" format that you wish for is "645" (54x42mm or thereabouts), as all successful/surviving medium format makers settled on by the end of the film era, and which is the upper limit for support by any current lens system.
Also, isn't it time to acknowledge that square is dead, as again all successful/surviving MF systems worked out decades ago? That doom started with the ability to rotate for verticals.
"Technically possible" can be very different than "commercially viable".
Rumors of the death of the square have been greatly exaggerated since the vast majority of the world's published pictures are now square -INSTAGRAM.
But if you insist, I'lll raise you (see above) to 48x72.
33x44 is just a marketing trick to allow some companies to sell 35mm lenses at a 3x markup and a 6x profit :)
Edmund
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Rumors of the death of the square have been greatly exaggerated since the vast majority of the world's published pictures are now square -INSTAGRAM.
Apart from the disconnect between "camera use too make photos fro Instagram posts" and "super-size MF sensors", I will note that:
- Instagram dropped its square-only conceit three years ago
- Most photos in my Instagram feed are oblongs like 4:3, not square.
- The cameras used to make Instagram posts do not have square sensors, probably because even for those who make some square photos (a confession: I take some food photos, and use square for some of those) square sensors are not the ideal choice, since the same camera is more often used for 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 etc.
But if you insist, I'lll raise you (see above) to 48x72.
33x44 is just a marketing trick to allow some companies to sell 35mm lenses at a 3x markup and a 6x profit :)
Conceding for the sake of argument your disparagement of 44x33mm, I will repeat that the solution is "645", not your imagined "quad full frame".
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Apart from the disconnect between "camera use too make photos fro Instagram posts" and "super-size MF sensors", I will note that:
- Instagram dropped its square-only conceit three years ago
- Most photos in my Instagram feed are oblongs like 4:3, not square.
- The cameras used to make Instagram posts do not have square sensors, probably because even for those who make some square photos (a confession: I take some food photos, and use square for some of those) square sensors are not the ideal choice, since the same camera is more often used for 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 etc.
Conceding for the sake of argument your disparagement of 44x33mm, I will repeat that the solution is "645", not your imagined "quad full frame".
Conceding, for the sake of progress of this dialog, that 645 is a "solution", when are we finally going to get that instead of this 44x33 joke labelled as "medium format? At least with 2x pixels there would be 4 camera years between a simultaneously released 35mm and 645.
I think 44x33 is now mostly a marketing trick allowing companies to sell decent camera gear at a huge markup.
Edmund
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I have no reason to expect P1, Hassy, Pentax, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Leica or Sony to produce anything larger than full-frame 645 in the foreseeable future.
In fact, I'd argue that only Phase One is strongly focused on full-frame 645. The IQ3 100mp Trichromatic (https://digitaltransitions.com/phase-one-iq3-100mp-trichromatic/) and IQ3 100mp (https://digitaltransitions.com/xf-100mp-camera-system/#specs) have been our largest sellers since the IQ3 100mp launched.
Everyone else seems to have the majority of their focus on 44x33 or smaller.
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If you can ask for 6x6, why not ask for 4x5? I doubt very much existing players like HB or TPO will make anything but for the platforms they developed so if it were to happen it would likely be someone new.
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Rumors of the death of the square have been greatly exaggerated since the vast majority of the world's published pictures are now square -INSTAGRAM.
But if you insist, I'lll raise you (see above) to 48x72.
33x44 is just a marketing trick to allow some companies to sell 35mm lenses at a 3x markup and a 6x profit :)
Edmund
Insta has supported formats other than square for some time. The thumbnails are all square but lesss than half the uploaded images I look at are square.
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I have no reason to expect P1, Hassy, Pentax, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Leica or Sony to produce anything larger than full-frame 645 in the foreseeable future.
In fact, I'd argue that only Phase One is strongly focused on full-frame 645. The IQ3 100mp Trichromatic (https://digitaltransitions.com/phase-one-iq3-100mp-trichromatic/) and IQ3 100mp (https://digitaltransitions.com/xf-100mp-camera-system/#specs) have been our largest sellers since the IQ3 100mp launched.
Everyone else seems to have the majority of their focus on 44x33 or smaller.
It would be interesting though to compare the absolute numbers of IQ100 sold vs H6D-100c. ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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Conceding, for the sake of progress of this dialog, that 645 is a "solution", when are we finally going to get that instead of this 44x33 joke labelled as "medium format?
That is a more interesting question for me. I presume you mean a mirrorless system using sensors that more or less fill the 54x42mm "645" frame, like the Sony IMX441, a BSI 150MP sensor coming soon; possibly this year: http://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/news/detail/170301.pdf
A wild speculation is that Phase One will go there first, and maybe soon: see Doug's comments about Phase One's focus vs that of Hasselblad etc.
P. S. a better link: https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/IS/sensor2/application/index.html
Diagonal is 67mm, close enough to the 70mm of "real 645" film format.
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At the risk of repeating myself, I think 33x44 is just a way of selling 35mm quality at a high markup.
With sensor prices falling it's a certainty that real MF is around the corner, what is less obvious is whether it will be economically viable now, or only when flexible low lpi sensors can allow people to bring back the giant cameras of yesteryear.
Edmund
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Edmund, can you clarify what you mean by that loaded phrasing “real medium format”?
I would think “645 and up” on the basis that medium format film cameras had moved to “645” as the most common flavor, but maybe you have something else in mind.
P. S. What data do you have on trends in costs of sensors larger than 36x24mm?
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Edmund, can you clarify what you mean by that loaded phrasing “real medium format”?
I would think “645 and up” on the basis that medium format film cameras had moved to “645” as the most common flavor, but maybe you have something else in mind
P. S. What data do you have on trends in costs of sensors larger than 36x24mm?
Hey, in my book "real MF" is quality that is clearly at least one level above 35mm, to such an extent that the best 35mm lenses and tricks like multiple shifted exposures won't make up the difference.
I have an old horse race film for you here, (Belmont Stakes 73) and at the end of this race one does know who won, immediately and clearly. Hint: It's not a horse called Sham who can stand in for 35mm in this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18ui3Rtjz4
Edmund
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Hey, in my book "real MF" is quality that is clearly at least one level above 35mm, to such an extent that the best 35mm lenses and tricks like multiple shifted exposures won't make up the difference.
I have an old horse race film for you here, (Belmont Stakes 73) and at the end of this race one does know who won, immediately and clearly. Hint: It's not a horse called Sham who can stand in for 35mm in this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18ui3Rtjz4
Edmund
i guess it comes down to your definition on true MF because top end available mirrorless and DSLR have replaced true MF in terms of IQ.....top end DMF has replaced 4x5 and 8x10.....
I would love to see a digital 6x9 fuji....but DSLRs and mirrorless have surpassed the 6x9 film version a while ago, and are smaller, faster, AF,.....and a lot cheaper....
i can understand if we would have to move to larger sensors to get better DR....which to a certain point is still true, larger pixels are in general better for color and DR....but tech is advancing so fast, we have 15 stop 40mpix cameras for 3K....the quality is there....lenses are a bigger issue....digital optical correction will be HUGE....
a 6x9 fuji asks so many questions that frankly nobody has the time or money to answer because in general they aren't relevant......
anyone with a ton of money would be able to make a "real" mf sensor....but honestly why stop there?
what specs are you looking for anyway? is size really the only thing you would love to see?
the new sony sensors are pretty much 645 (which was never "real" MF) and in which way are they THAT much better? bigger pixels, better color, better DR....i expect the 33x44 sensor to have pretty much the same IQ.....i am sure there is special sauce on top, everybody will claim that their version is superior and we will discuss......and those files will be better then what is out now in terms of top FF.....but we do know that they have bigger pockets and have to turn things out faster.....and its only just really starting....the nikon Z will probably have the 850 sensor, which is pretty amazing, but it will be tweaked and be even slightly better.....canon needs to come up with something, at least they will try.....and sony is sitting back and waiting for the dust to settle only to drop another bomb in terms of specs and price....because they can.....
i also dont see 33x44 as a stop gap....should be big enough for sensors to find a perfect pixel size/count ratio....we used to say that nobody wants 100mpix....i still agree to a certain point but as long as file size is manageable and storage keeps getting bigger and cheaper and we dont have issues pushing those pixels around (which we dont right now) why not? so 100 mpix, i would like to see 16 stops DR and with that probably comes clean 3200 (although i would prefer clean 1600 and a base of 50), for me that system would still be able to have fast AF as well as a 6fps and a burst of 18......33x44 would make any crop really easy, the file size would allow for not only cropping for size but also for content....camera and lenses would be small and light enough....obvioulsy this would be mirrorless.....and honestly we are pretty close to this now, and in a few years this will be available.....not sure what you cant shoot with that....
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I think that the opportunity could exist in 36mmx36mm. The sensor size is already exceeded in reality, so all it takes is a dedicated body and a set of optics that can cover that properly.
No, I do not accept that the square is dead. It offers all sorts of advantages too numerous to go through again. I used that format for decades and only moved to 6x7 to suit the request of a stock agency, right before digital popped up to make that purchase as redundant as every other film camera.
There are several very successful art photographers still using the square format... It's about a way of seeing, not just mechanics and electronics.
For me, mirrorless or prism, it would be the same just as long as the screen was usable at eye level and able to be viewed without a hundred flashing lights and bloody indicators of one kind or another; all we need is shutter speed, aperture and ISO. A histogram somewhere else on the body is quite enough for me. I don't want it in the viewfinder.
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I think that the opportunity could exist in 36mmx36mm. The sensor size is already exceeded in reality, so all it takes is a dedicated body and a set of optics that can cover that properly.
No, I do not accept that the square is dead. It offers all sorts of advantages too numerous to go through again. I used that format for decades and only moved to 6x7 to suit the request of a stock agency, right before digital popped up to make that purchase as redundant as every other film camera.
There are several very successful art photographers still using the square format... It's about a way of seeing, not just mechanics and electronics.
For me, mirrorless or prism, it would be the same just as long as the screen was usable at eye level and able to be viewed without a hundred flashing lights and bloody indicators of one kind or another; all we need is shutter speed, aperture and ISO. A histogram somewhere else on the body is quite enough for me. I don't want it in the viewfinder.
Long live the square!
Maybe Hassy will provide a square mode for the X1D. Oh wait, that's only 33x33, less than you're proposing :)
It's annoying when reality collides with marketing, no?
Edmund
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There are several very successful art photographers still using the square format... It's about a way of seeing, not just mechanics and electronics.
If it were just a matter of "seeing" then EVFs are good news; they can display just the selected shape, be it 1:1, 5:4, 4:3, 3:4 etc. Sensor shape is just a matter of prioritizing which of those uses the largest proportion of the sensor (and of the display area of the EVF and the rear screen). I have no doubt that "several very successful art photographers" – and a rather larger number of less successful ones – would prioritize 1:1, but it takes a lot more than "several" customers to make the design and production of large square sensors and camera and lenses to use them economically viable.
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I recall that Hasselblad showed a square format concept camera at the last Photokina, the V1D. I think it contemplated the use of the XCD lenses and the current "true" MF sensor with 100MP in a square format to yield 75 MP. Will it show up at Photokina 2018? I doubt Hasselblad has the bandwith to pull it off.
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I recall that Hasselblad showed a square format concept camera at the last Photokina, the V1D. I think it contemplated the use of the XCD lenses and the current "true" MF sensor with 100MP in a square format to yield 75 MP. Will it show up at Photokina 2018? I doubt Hasselblad has the bandwith to pull it off.
It looked the part, and it featured in one of the LuLa videos with a Hassy head honcho - unless I am getting confused again. However, it remained on the desk and nobody pretended it worked!
Using lenses optimised for larger formats on smaller formats is not an ideal situation at all, as I discovered years ago on film. I agree with those who would suggest that 1 x 1.5 does not make for a perfect format: it seems to work well for horizontals but less so on verticals, especially with people.
Using crops within a camera is not something I would want to do - I think my Nikons allow that but I have never wanted to use the feature. The only time it was done (by me) was with film, when I made masks for the viewfinder for specific jobs, and that was very rarely indeed.
I'm one of those people who makes the framing suit the format. Yes, of course one can take a straight FF shot and then make sub-framings within it, but why? Better get it right first time.
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I read Ming Thein saying in his comments that Sony won't make them (Hasselblad) a bigger sensor.
VD came from cropping the existing 100MP 645 sensor to a square.
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At the risk of repeating myself, I think 33x44 is just a way of selling 35mm quality at a high markup.
With sensor prices falling it's a certainty that real MF is around the corner, what is less obvious is whether it will be economically viable now, or only when flexible low lpi sensors can allow people to bring back the giant cameras of yesteryear.
Edmund
33x44 v 35mm is night and day. IQ250 for example destroys any 35mm, not just in outright IQ but in file malleability.
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33x44 v 35mm is night and day. IQ250 for example destroys any 35mm, not just in outright IQ but in file malleability.
the IQ250 has the same sensor as the X1D, GFX and pentax, right? i agree that there are certain areas where it might have an advantage but it does not destroy the A7RIII or D850
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... 1 x 1.5 does not make for a perfect format: it seems to work well for horizontals but less so on verticals, especially with people.
Agreed—fortunately no "true medium format system" is in 3:2 shape (where my arbitrary definition of "true MF" excludes Leica's 30x45mm.) The 4:3 shape of all recent MF sensors is instead extremely close to the classic 8"x10" print format; only 1/16th needs to be cut off the top.
Rather than persist in the pointless effort to persuade people that what they wish for is not going to happen, let me float some alternative wishes:
A) A pure-bred portrait/verticals camera, with sensor and EVF oriented vertically. It could display and deliver 4:5 (w:h) by default, but using a standard 3:4 shaped sensor like Sony's 40.1x53.4 ones — that slight 6% crop to 4:5 (40.1x50.125mm) would only be changeable with a setting buried deep in the menus where Rob C. would never find it, so he would not know that he was cropping.
B) Never mind resurrecting the square, bring back the rotating back! Or actually, a mechanism to internally rotate both the sensor and EVF, so that both verticals and horizontals can be taken with the grip and controls in the same ergonomically optimal position. Phase One could do this with retro styling and call it the Mamiya RB-D.
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Hi,
The VD was just a mock up. No sensor at all.
Best regards
Erik
I read Ming Thein saying in his comments that Sony won't make them (Hasselblad) a bigger sensor.
VD came from cropping the existing 100MP 645 sensor to a square.