Equipment & Techniques > Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography

6 cm × 7 cm: The Future of Ideal Format

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Christoph C. Feldhaim:
In the times of sensor real estate being the expensive resource the question is completely valid.

How shall a rectangular sensor be fitted into the image circle of the lenses?

A square sensor allows to get the most area out of a given circle, but is it really so useful when needing to crop for rectangular landscape or portrait shots?
Which aspect ratio allows most utilization?
If I like 2:3 I'd have to crop a lot to use a square sensor.
If I like square I'd have to crop a lot with a 2:3 rectangular sensor.

I personally find myself using more and more squarish, less dynamic aspect ratios, 6x7 being one I use often,but for someone else that might be totally different.
Maybe its my Mamiya 7 II which started to educate me in that way.

A square sensor covering the whole image circle would allow most flexibility at the disadvantage of higher sensor costs.
After all there's no free lunch and no magic bullet ...

Cheers
~Chris

Rob C:
Cropping the negative area in some way is pretty much always the norm unless you can tie your work into a format, which I used to do with my own calendar designs: I always drew them around a square image or a 135 format one. In the latter case, it was a very good reason for living Nikon: the F, F2 and F4 (also the F3 I bought later) all showed 100% viewfinder coverage, which I don't believe the Leica R series ever did  - by a long way. (I'm not sure about the viewfinder frame accuracy of the old 'blads, but at that size it really didn't matter very much). Framing accuracy on the hop was one very good reason why I never went Leica M, either.

Eventually, as I aged and the calendar images got bigger, I went onto tripods for much of the stuff, but only from about 85mm focal lengths or longer. Tripods were always passion-killers, but long lenses created a different visual dynamic anyway - more 'considered', you might say, and focussing was clearly more iffy hand-held with those longer things, never mind shake! And with ASA 64 transparency film...

Rob C

Ken R:

--- Quote from: Atina on March 03, 2014, 08:20:53 am ---What does the future look like for the 6 cm × 7 cm format?

Is it true that the last models of 6 cm × 7 cm cameras have already been produced, and that neither Mamiya, Pentax, nor Voigtländer intend to get back to developing more advanced versions of their cameras for the format?

--- End quote ---

The future is nonexistent for 6x7. What is out there is what it is going to be. Film might still be produced for many more years but I wouldn't be surprised for the number of available film products to be steadily reduced every year until there are almost none left.

None of the current Medium Format Digital companies will make a sensor large than the ones you see now. Infact, now that the 50mp Sony CMOS sensor has been introduced, at 33x44mm, it might become the new standard MF Digital sensor size.  That means that the sensor size in the Credo60/IQ160/IQ160 at 40.4x54mm might be the larges sensor available ever (the Leaf Aptus II 10 at 36mm x 56mm the widest) for current SLR and tech cameras.

BJL:
A lot of good posts in this thread. Ray (ondebanks, not the other Ray) gives a great overall answer, and Chris explains the economics of sensor shape well ...

--- Quote from: Christoph C. Feldhaim on March 04, 2014, 06:59:57 am ---In the times of sensor real estate being the expensive resource the question is completely valid.

How shall a rectangular sensor be fitted into the image circle of the lenses?
...
A square sensor covering the whole image circle would allow most flexibility at the disadvantage of higher sensor costs.
After all there's no free lunch and no magic bullet ...

--- End quote ---
... and all I will add is that since the strategy of "sensor covering more than the image circle" only makes sense when sensor cost is relative low compared to lens cost, it is no surprise that the only times anything like this has has been tried is with smaller sensors, like Panasonic's "multiple aspect ratio" sensors in some 4/3" and smaller cameras. Even then, there is a cost effectiveness advantage to a shape in middle of the desired image shape range, not at one extreme (which square is, once you are willing to rotate the camera, or to rotate the back as with Mamiya's RB approach). 4:3 seems a good sensor shape balance within the dominant image shape range of about 5:4 to 3:2.

Also: "ideal" is personal choice of balance between image quality and factors like size, weight, cost (and for film cameras also constraints of available film stock like the 56mm width of roll film), and digital has shifted that balance substantially on both sensor image quality and cost at a given format. So it should be no surprise that there has been a substantial downsizing of the formats used at any given level of photography, and this makes it very unlikely that there will ever be a commercial case for sensor formats larger than the "645" upper limit of the systems now made by Phase One, Hasselblad, Pentax, Leica, etc.

About the only thing I disagree with is the idea the 44x33mm will take over; I see the Sony/Phase One/Hasselblad/Pentax use of that format for the first CMOS sensor bigger than 35mm format as just a continuation of the use of that format as the least expensive "entry level MF" option, with upsizing towards "645 full frame" coming next as CMOS continues its takeover of the photographic sensor market.

EricWHiss:
I keep thinking that the last frontier is format / sensor size because increasing pixel density has drawbacks that will eventually outweigh the increased costs of going bigger.

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