Square sensor?

[wjdrijfhout]

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It's probably a crazy idea, but has any digital camera ever been developed with a square sensor, and is that at all possible?

 

Imagine the SL with a square sensor, assuming same pixel-size and physical width it would yield a 36Mp, 36/36mm sensor. Possibly not all of that surface would be covered by the lens image circle. But a 30x30mm crop (25Mp) certainly is. This would be identical to a square crop from an S camera! Applications such as macro-, product- and portrait photography, areas where medium format cameras such as the S are often used, use square or near-square formats quite regularly. So we would have an SL as medium (square) format camera, without needing to buy into a whole new system with new lenses. Dr. Kaufmann highlighted the L-mount's versatility. Agreed, this is not as versatile as a watch, but still.... 

 

In 'normal' use, it would yield workflow and ergonomic benefits. Allow to make landscape and portrait photographs while holding the camera in the same position. Allow making a decision on landscape vs portrait in post-processing. Not having to hold the camera in vertical position will have an ergonomic benefit. I own the vertical grip, especially for portrait use with the 90-280 lens, but dont like it a lot and leave it home most often. No more L-brackets and switching on tripods. More overlap in panorama-shots taken in vertical positioning, allowing less photos to be stitched. Etc.

 

The SL-lenses, although big, are absolutely gorgeous in their performance, and using more of their image circle just feels good.... 

 

There are probably many reasons why this is not a good idea, but looking forward to hear your thoughts and perhaps examples where this has been tried?

One obvious reason will be the higher price of a bigger sensor/shutter/evf. But a few thousand more for an SL2+ with square sensor, is still a lot different than €20k for an S + a series of lenses.

 

Perhaps Leica could try the concept in a Huawei phone? Finally getting rid of 'portrait' video's because of one-hand use of the phone....:-).

 

 

[HaraldL]

It's probably a crazy idea, but has any digital camera ever been developed with a square sensor, and is that at all possible?

 

Imagine the SL with a square sensor, assuming same pixel-size and physical width it would yield a 36Mp, 36/36mm sensor. Possibly not all of that surface would be covered by the lens image circle. But a 30x30mm crop (25Mp) certainly is. This would be identical to a square crop from an S camera! Applications such as macro-, product- and portrait photography, areas where medium format cameras such as the S are often used, use square or near-square formats quite regularly. So we would have an SL as medium (square) format camera, without needing to buy into a whole new system with new lenses. Dr. Kaufmann highlighted the L-mount's versatility. Agreed, this is not as versatile as a watch, but still.... 

 

In 'normal' use, it would yield workflow and ergonomic benefits. Allow to make landscape and portrait photographs while holding the camera in the same position. Allow making a decision on landscape vs portrait in post-processing. Not having to hold the camera in vertical position will have an ergonomic benefit. I own the vertical grip, especially for portrait use with the 90-280 lens, but dont like it a lot and leave it home most often. No more L-brackets and switching on tripods. More overlap in panorama-shots taken in vertical positioning, allowing less photos to be stitched. Etc.

 

The SL-lenses, although big, are absolutely gorgeous in their performance, and using more of their image circle just feels good.... 

 

There are probably many reasons why this is not a good idea, but looking forward to hear your thoughts and perhaps examples where this has been tried?

One obvious reason will be the higher price of a bigger sensor/shutter/evf. But a few thousand more for an SL2+ with square sensor, is still a lot different than €20k for an S + a series of lenses.

 

Perhaps Leica could try the concept in a Huawei phone? Finally getting rid of 'portrait' video's because of one-hand use of the phone....:-).

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[HaraldL]

Nice topic, some math’s have been done regarding the M9: https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/21194-square-format-m9/page-2,

and was discussed in LFI as well (which I don’t have any more).

[Jeff S]

Mike Johnston at TOP once posed the question....

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/01/why-not-square-sensors.html

 

Of course there are now cameras that can crop in camera to a square, and one that does that ‘natively’, but not because the sensor is square...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thephoblographer.com/2016/09/19/the-hasselblad-1vd-features-a-75mp-square-sensor/amp/

 

Jeff

[keithlaban.co.uk]

Hasselblad developed and sold digital backs with square sensors.

[daveco]

When I looked for medium format film system, I went with 6x7, because i felt like it would offer me less cropping, and more use of imagery. But that’s me; square formats were (are) incredibly popular.

[Herr Barnack]

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I loved my Hasselblad 501 and 503 cameras and their lenses, but somehow the square format never felt right to me.  Maybe if I had set aside my 35mm cameras and shot only 6x6 for a year or two, the square would have grown on me; regrettably (a little, anyway), I didn't choose take that path.

 

Not sure why, but the 24x36mm format is a good fit for my photographic vision.  A teaching assistant at a workshop i attended once remarked that I "see" (compose) a lot more effectively in the 35mm format. 

 

I do well in composing with my XPAN's 24x65mm panoramic format, but I almost always gravitate to my M-P 240 and not based exclusively on the format's 2:3 aspect ratio.

[pico]

"We can crop the square anywhere." -- David Vestal

[Arrow]

Kodak DCS pro back, 16 megapixels CCD, was square. 

[caissa]

On the SL you can select square format in the camera or chose your square in post processing. Both is more than enough for me. And with more resolution - next gen - you get the desired 6000x6000 pixels.  Inventing and building a customized square sensor is prohibitatively expensive. Help yourself with software. 😉

[lanetomlane]

36 minutes ago, caissa said:

On the SL you can select square format in the camera or chose your square in post processing. Both is more than enough for me. And with more resolution - next gen - you get the desired 6000x6000 pixels.  Inventing and building a customized square sensor is prohibitatively expensive. Help yourself with software. 😉

Thanks for that .... I'd overlooked the fact that you can set the SL's aspect ratio 1:1. Saves messing around in software. 😊

Cheers, Tom

[BernardC]

11 hours ago, Arrow said:

Kodak DCS pro back, 16 megapixels CCD, was square. 

As were a few other medium format backs that used the same Kodak CCD. The original Hasselblad CFV was one, but I'm sure that Phase One, Leaf, Sinar, etc., had their own version.

I really really want a "Baby Rollei" with a square sensor.

[adan]

NB: Kodak made the 16Mp square sensors (CCD - granddaddies to the Leica M8/9 and Digital R Module sensors) for several digital back manufacturers: themselves, Phase One, eventually Hassy's own CFV back.

The square image format primarily came into use with the advent of the waist-level-viewing Rolleis (and similar; Hassy coming along 20 years later) because it was not possible to turn those cameras for vertical pictures (until viewfinder prisms came along, also decades later) - everything went upside-down as well as backwards. It was convenient - if somewhat wasteful of film area - to shoot square and crop as needed afterwards. Pros "shot to crop" for the rectangles of magazine pages or full "8 x 10/11 x 14" prints, whose proportions are generally close to one of the "ideal" formats - 645, 6x7, 4x5. Which, once prisms were developed, moved in on the square cameras in increasing numbers (Pentax 6x7, Mamiya 645 and RB67, etc.) for pro work in the 1970s.

(Yeah, yeah, I know - a "square" is also a rectangle. But the photo paper makers and magazine producers didn't cater to it.)

"Square" was not considered an especially desirable format in its own right - across the industry as a whole - until Fritz "Mr. Rollei" Henle began publishing books in which he often made use of the whole square negative effectively. Which inspired artists and documentarians (those aiming at prints, not "the media") to start using it uncropped more and more, beginning around 1940. The NY Photo League, Aaron Siskin, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn in his personal projects. Sometimes to make use of the frame edges as a "statement" - black borders or rough film-carrier edges - the "whole picture." In a neutral shape, with no compositional bias vertical or horizontal.

(Square is also used as a format for orthagonal (straight down) aerial or satellite mapping cameras - makes it easier to "grid" the pictures together afterwards. Think "Google Maps.")

Bottom line - film or digital, the square format is "wasteful" unless one intends to make square pictures. Paying for 50 Mpixels and a lens to cover them, and then throwing away 30% of that picture with cropping gets kinda expensive. In the quality/resolution of the lens needed to stand up to constant cropping, the storage used for those "unused" pixels, etc. etc. Which is why pre-cropped rectangles (645/6x7 format in film, 44x33 or 42x54 sensors) moved in so quickly. The Kodak square sensor is long dead - not desired by enough of the marketplace. Dalsa made one, never sold commerically, and probably for customers with top-secret satellites for cameras (ahem).

I love square pictures - shot that way through the viewfinder and uncropped. Thus I still shoot some 6x6 film. And I personally would love someone to put out a square-sensor system. But not for cropping afterwards.

 

[ramarren]

I frame with square proportions in mind quite often, with any camera, and just crop to get it. With LR, I can select an arbitrary number of images and simply apply a centered square crop to them in a second, and then adjust the precise position of the square crop on individual frames when desired. Now that 24Mpixel and higher resolution sensors are readily available, I see little problem with this strategy given that even a 16 Mpixel square cropped image from a 2:3 format sensor will print beautifully to a 17x17 inch print, larger than I can make at home on my P600 printer, and right at the limits of a P800 that I have access to. 

[Arrow]

Here, is one photo taken with a DCS Pro Back attached to a Hassi 555 eld. Did not use it for a while, but the thing still works and the IQ is pretty good. At the time - early 2000s - all other 35mm pro camera beasts were in the 5 megapixel league.

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Edited December 11, 2018 by Arrow

[Peter Branch]

Back in the day I used a Rollei 6 x6 film camera and the negatives were almost always printed on a range of "Imperial" paper sizes, 10"x8", 16"x12", whole plate i.e.61/2" x 81/2", etc. Cropping was "The Norm".

Today with the SL the image is 3:2 and gets printed on A3, A4, etc. papers, which again necessitate a crop.

As far as I know nobody supplies Inkjet paper in any of the old "Imperial" sizes, or indeed in the Letter etc sizes more frequently used in the USA.

All this leads me to wonder why the "Crop Lines" that are available as optional settings in Leica's  digital viewfinders are all in old/obsolescent/obsolete film size and not in the formats of modern printing papers which many publications demand?  

 

[verwackelt]

I never loved the square formats. It is off course a matter of taste. At analogue times i had too many baryta cut offs for test prints when printing 6x6 😉
Once i owned a Mamiya 7 but it was still "too square" for me. So i bought a used Fuji GSW (Texas leica) and found 6x9 is a pleasing format.
I had a chance to borrow a Fuji GFX and found 4:3 is not my fav. I cropped to 2:3 mostly...
 

[earleygallery]

I have a Zeiss 35mm camera which takes square negs.

For camera designers it was a choice of format. If you shoot album covers it works well too!

When I bought a Bronica ETRS I did so for its 645 format partly to avoid wasted film (as most would be cropped to rectangular form for weddings etc). I used it with a prism finder and speed grip and it's a great combination, but what I did miss was the ability to leave the camera on a tripod and using the WLF - you can keep eye contact with your subjects rather than holding a large camera to your face all the time.

I'd say that is the main benefit of a WLF 6X6 camera.

I'd love to see a digital Hassy or Rollei - square sensor and an LCD mounted on the top to use as a waist level finder (with a flip up hood etc).

[Brian C in Az]

On 12/10/2018 at 6:15 AM, caissa said:

On the SL you can select square format in the camera or chose your square in post processing. 

What is the advantage of choosing 1:1 in the body?

Wouldn't you essentially be limiting the amount of image captured? Would it not be better to crop in post processing where you can fine tune the actual crop?

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[pico]

On 8/26/2018 at 7:43 AM, wjdrijfhout said:

It's probably a crazy idea, but has any digital camera ever been developed with a square sensor, and is that at all possible

Maybe with a new large format, but with our tiny 36x24 format square is as crazy suggestions for a round format. What do we gain th a square? Perhaps in cutting CMOS chips there is a very little bit to be trimmed but it probably economical considering consumer expectations. IOW, it is a stupid idea.

Edited December 18, 2018 by pico