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Why not a square sensor?

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I tend to find 4x5 raitios pleasing for many things.

4:3 irks me becuase I have to crop for 4x6 (and would have to crop for 8x10). At least 3:2 gives me one size natively without cropping. Not a huge deal one way or the other.
--



A small but growing collection of my photos can be seen at
http://www.pbase.com/poliscijustin
 
jpp said:
a 20x20 sensor will give you a 30% surface gain against the APS> sensor...
Click to expand...
Only to get thrown away, like it always was, in the printing.
Not good
Indeded truly stupid
Just like it always was.

There are people on this planet, about twenty of them, who consistently produce square pictures and think it's a good idea but in truth they probably only do it as a pathetic justification of the stupid mistake they made paying big bucks for a stupid camera. Hasselblad and co. will service their needs. Just like Porsche service the needs of people who think having the motor in the wrong end is a good idea.

I don't think you should hold your breath waiting for the likes of Nikon offer this.
 
Take the practicalities of building it aside for a moment... a square sensor would allow you to implement 'on-the-fly' format changing... a switch on your cam takes you from landscape 3:2 to 4:3 to 1:1 then to portrait 4:3 and portrait 3:2... don't need to twist your camera around!

But i think the practicalities are against it. In-lens baffles, mirror boxes would need to be square, lower yields etc.

Maybe one day.
Alistair
--
http://www.alistair-hamilton.com/Gallery/cpg146/

Music:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=353601
 
jpp said:
a 20x20 sensor will give you a 30% surface gain against the APS
sensor...
Not too bad!
Click to expand...
But you lose 10% of your width (or height, in portrait orientation).

--
Seen in a fortune cookie:
Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed
 
twonker said:
Take the practicalities of building it aside for a moment... a
square sensor would allow you to implement 'on-the-fly' format
changing... a switch on your cam takes you from landscape 3:2 to
4:3 to 1:1 then to portrait 4:3 and portrait 3:2... don't need to
twist your camera around!
Click to expand...
You can do the same cropping with rectangular formats. Rotating the camera is a benefit, because you get full resolution in two formats (i.e. 3:2 and 2:3) instead of just 1 (1:1) with square.

--
Seen in a fortune cookie:
Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed
 
nickleback said:
Why 30.5x30.5? Diagonal of the square/rectangle has to fit within
the same image circle. 36x24 is 43.3mm. Largest square you can
fit in the same size circle is 30.5x30.5.
Click to expand...
For what it's worth, a square with 7% more surface area.
 
nickleback said:
The shape is round. It is baffled to whatever shape the sensor is.
A square doesn't approximate a circle any better than a rectange
does.
Click to expand...
Sure it does. But you're right, I'm clearly being foolish, as it's definitely true that you can fit a wider rectangle in the same circle -- up to 40% wider if you don't mind it not being very tall.
nickleback said:
nickleback said:
Given the
compromise that we're working with square pixels on rectangular
monitors, a square seems the best bet.
Click to expand...
Shape of pixels != shape of sensing or display device. It is
trivial to make a rectangle out of a number of squares.
Click to expand...
I meant square as opposed to having. for example, a hex-based polar coordinate display system. Then, just make it a circle. (With, in the example, hex-based jaggies on the edges.)
 
Matthew Miller said:
Matthew Miller said:
nickleback wrote:> > Largest square you can> > fit in the same size circle is 30.5x30.5.> > For what it's worth, a square with 7% more surface area.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
From which you will invariably crop a rectangular picture with an area about 70% of the one you could have gotten in the first place.So is that a good idea?
 
nickoly said:
nickoly said:
For what it's worth, a square with 7% more surface area.
Click to expand...
From which you will invariably crop a rectangular picture with an
area about 70% of the one you could have gotten in the first place.
So is that a good idea?
Click to expand...
No; hence "for what it's worth". :)
 
when was the last time you saw a square print or for that matter painting? I have 12 nice works of art (not mine) hanging on the walls in my house - none of them are square.

--
Edward

Lenses listed in profile

 
twonker said:
Take the practicalities of building it aside for a moment... a
square sensor would allow you to implement 'on-the-fly' format
changing... a switch on your cam takes you from landscape 3:2 to
4:3 to 1:1 then to portrait 4:3 and portrait 3:2... don't need to
twist your camera around!
Click to expand...
This might well be practical, but not in an SLR: the sensor cost is too large a fraction of the camera cost, and it increases too quickly with size. Never mind the problems with mirror size and lens baffles...

Perhaps a superzoom digicam, with its cheaper small sensor and a relatively expensive lens, would be a better application. You could, for instance, take the Panasonic FZ7 and replace its 1/2.5" (5.76x4.29 mm) sensor with a 2/3" (8.8x6.6 mm) sensor - larger than needed, but already available.

The LCD would be a problem, but if current "tilt and twist" designs are any indication, it would not be difficult to put it on a rotating mount. Then the photographer would just turn the LCD, instead of the whole camera, to switch between portrait and landscape. (Bonus points for one that can turn a full 360 degrees.)

This design would have a particular advantage with a flash hotshoe, because the flash would stay on top of the camera in portrait orientation. I know there are other ways to accomplish this, but none so convenient!

Is this a viable product concept? I don't have the marketing expertise to say. Of course there are tradeoffs, and those could be hard to justify in a competitive market. But there have certainly been other unusual designs that succeeded, like Nikon's swivel-lens cameras (the latest being the S10).

--
Alan Martin
 
nickoly said:
jpp said:
a 20x20 sensor will give you a 30% surface gain against the APS
sensor...
Click to expand...
Only to get thrown away, like it always was, in the printing.
Not good
Indeded truly stupid
Just like it always was.
There are people on this planet, about twenty of them, who
consistently produce square pictures and think it's a good idea but
in truth they probably only do it as a pathetic justification of
the stupid mistake they made paying big bucks for a stupid camera.
Hasselblad and co. will service their needs. Just like Porsche
service the needs of people who think having the motor in the wrong
end is a good idea.
I don't think you should hold your breath waiting for the likes of
Nikon offer this.
Click to expand...
Now I don't have any problems with you dissing Hasselblad but Porsche certainly doesn't put the motor in the wrong end; it's right there by the driving wheels. It's true that there are compromises with storage space but the things corner like nothing else short of race cars, which also have rear engines.

I guess what we need is a round sensor the size of the image circle. That way, everyone gets what they want. I can cut one but I don't know if anyone can get the dat out of it.

--
Leonard Migliore
 
nickleback said:
Why 30.5x30.5? Diagonal of the square/rectangle has to fit within
the same image circle. 36x24 is 43.3mm. Largest square you can
fit in the same size circle is 30.5x30.5.
Click to expand...
This limitation applies to making a square photo, at least if you don't like black corners. But the sensor could usefully be as large as 40x40 mm, leaving it to firmware to crop the output to fit the image circle - or even doing this later in RAW conversion.

You dismissed that idea elsewhere in the thread, because it wastes pixels. But what if we're lens-limited instead of sensor-limited? See my other post:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=20063982

--
Alan Martin
 
What you are looking at is the "curse of the Rolleiflex". Franke & Heidecke came up with a pretty good package for the 1930s, a well made twin lens reflex. The fundamental problem is that they are not nice to use when rotated 90 degrees. The cure for the problem is the square format, and that is the only reason for the square format. F & H used to have all sorts of pathetic ads trying to justify the photographic merits of medium format and 6x6 film, usually with swans on a lake, accompanied by drivel about lots of pictures for just one click, all of them, needless to say, being a lot smaller than 24x36mm.

Eventually somebody put them out of their misery and invented the pentaprism so we could all get to the 6x4.5 format, and rotate our way to glory with sixteen shots on a roll..
Matthew Miller said:
When I first saw the subject, I thought the it would obviously > work out to be much better. But clearly when one looks at it more> carefully, not so at all.
Click to expand...
 
Alan Martin said:
This limitation applies to making a square photo, at least if you
don't like black corners. But the sensor could usefully be as
large as 40x40 mm, leaving it to firmware to crop the output to fit
the image circle - or even doing this later in RAW conversion.
Click to expand...
Those pixels are expensive to waste. Here's a camera with a slightly smaller square sensor, 36.7x36.7. Check the price...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=437386&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

Here's the same camera with the same lens, no digital back:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=365403&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

If I was getting a sensor that size, I'd be sure to get one where I wouldn't waste pixels.

--
Seen in a fortune cookie:
Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed
 
... selectable for frame proportions and veritcal/horizontal. My dream camera would be something like the Sony 828 scaled up to take a 4/3 lens mount and about a 17mm square sensor of 12 to 16 MP.

I've never seen a small, modern camera that handled equally well for vertical and horiazontals. The vast majority of cameras are designed for horizontals, while the vast majority of my photos (people) are vertical.

It would also be nice to have proportions to fit standard enlargement sizes in the viewfinder and playback instead of having to estimate how much will be cropped out -- and sometimes explain it to the customer.

--
J.R.

Somewhere south of Amarillo
 
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