Full frame ... full frame...

Rich42 · Nov 2, 2023

JimKasson said:
Karl Huber said:

Back when I was using film, we referred to what is now called "full-frame" as 35mm.

6cm X 7cm we referred to as "medium frame"

6cm X 6cm was "6 X 6"

Click to expand...

We called it "two and a quarter square". That's 57.15 mm on a side which is closer to the real size of the frame.

I don't remember "two and a quarter square" used much. It was "two and a quarter by two and a quarter," in most of the parts of the East Coast where I worked.

Its metric equivalent, "6 x 6" was not an expression I heard very much. But I occasionally saw that in magazine discussions.

But "six by seven" and "six forty five" were commonly spoken expressions for those sizes.

All of those were different flavors of cameras that everyone agreed were Medium Format.

There was "thirty five millimeter." Everyone, including non-photographers knew exactly what that meant. I never heard the term "miniature camera" spoken, but the press often used it. No one used the term "twenty four by thirty six," but magazine articles used "24 x 36 mm" almost exclusively when discussing the format, never "35mm."

The term "full frame" never existed until sometime after about 2003-4 to distinguish the 24 x 36 mm sensor cameras emerging from the hoards of smaller digital sensor cameras. But the term "half-frame" had appeared and stuck with the release of the 18 x 24mm Olympus Pen (an excellent camera) in the late 1950s and some imitators in the 1960s.

I had one enlarging session with "half frame" negs and refused to touch the stuff again. It was hard enough to get a "full page" (8.5 x 11) image out of 35mm. Hell, the keeper rate for really good quality full page images from Medium Format was hard enough.

"Large Format" was always 4x5 or larger.

Cameras smaller than 35mm/half frame were "spy cameras," like the Minox.

--
Rich
"That's like, just your opinion, man." ;-)

jean-pierre peretti · Nov 2, 2023

I remember my beloved Nikon F cameras were called 24x36 (when spoken, even not mm) bodies.

JPierre

EDIT My Hassy was a "six-six", my Pentax a "six-sept", so "six-seven"

paulraphael · Nov 2, 2023

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Valued Customer · Nov 2, 2023

Greg7579 said:
Doppler9000 said:

marco1974 said:

Stan Disbrow said:

The AI can't search stuff that isn't online.

Stan

Click to expand...

Exactly my main point.

Click to expand...

The problem is much deeper than that. AI cannot distinguish fact from error, and Wikipedia, for example, is full of errors.

“Garbage in, garbage out” is still in effect, but it is far worse if people can’t see it’s garbage.

Click to expand...

I'm a bit paranoid, but I actually think AI can search my brain.

Well I had thought about AI when you were in Petra so let us see if it can already read your brain…..Asked Bing image generator to generate photo in greg7579 style and Jim’s style.

Which is by you?

Second one is Greg style. Main thing I noticed is your style suggestions from Bing AI were tighter landscapes than Jim style. No idea if any truth to it and if AI vacuumed up your flicker page.

Personally I suspect AI will soon do a real good job confusing people but in a couple more iterations it will astound and still produce Herculean mistakes.

The testing of AI in the 2024 election should get really strange. I feel bad for undecided targeted voters in swing states who do not live in hard R or hard D counties. I suspect the micro targeting is about to become so targeted as to give some of these apolitical people a bit of ptsd.

Rich42 · Nov 2, 2023

paulraphael said:
I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Agree on both counts.

I dislike the term "crop frame camera" for any size camera. The camera is its own size.

Period.

"Crop frame" gives rise to the concept of "lens equivalence." A "concept" which I intensely dislike.

A 50mm f/1.8 lens on an APS-C camera isn't equivalent to anything "full frame."

It's a 50mm lens on the APS-C camera with all the specific characteristics of that focal length and that maximum aperture on that camera size.

While those of us who worked with 50mm lenses on "35mm" cameras, and 80mm lenses on "2-1/4 x 2-1/4" cameras, and 165mm lenses on "4x5" cameras and 300mm lenses on "8x10" cameras understood that those were all "normal" lenses on those cameras, none of us ever expected that the images from those cameras would "be equivalent" in any way imaginable.

Greg7579 · Nov 2, 2023

Rich42 said:
paulraphael said:

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Click to expand...

Agree on both counts.

I dislike the term "crop frame camera" for any size camera. The camera is its own size.

Period.

"Crop frame" gives rise to the concept of "lens equivalence." A "concept" which I intensely dislike.

A 50mm f/1.8 lens on an APS-C camera isn't equivalent to anything "full frame."

It's a 50mm lens on the APS-C camera with all the specific characteristics of that focal length and that maximum aperture on that camera size.

While those of us who worked with 50mm lenses on "35mm" cameras, and 80mm lenses on "2-1/4 x 2-1/4" cameras, and 165mm lenses on "4x5" cameras and 300mm lenses on "8x10" cameras understood that those were all "normal" lenses on those cameras, none of us ever expected that the images from those cameras would "be equivalent" in any way imaginable.

Well said and I agree. But as a guy who shot a lot of Fuji X APSC, FF and GFX, I am guilty of doing the equivalency in my head. After all of these years I still think in "FF" 35mm film terms. When I shoot 100mm with a GF lens, it pops into my head that is an 80. When I used to shoot 10omm with Fuji X, it popped into my head that it was 160 field of view. When I shoot 100mm with FF, it pops into my head that it is really a 100.

I don't know why. I just can't help it.

But you are right.

Doppler9000 · Nov 2, 2023

paulraphael said:
I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless

It is useful to the degree that people have a shared understanding of what it means.

What would you propose instead?

paulraphael said:
and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

It means smaller than film medium format (120 film), as you likely know.

Nomenclature is often arbitrary. Wide, common usage is a reasonable goal, it seems.

Greg7579 · Nov 2, 2023

Doppler9000 said:
paulraphael said:

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless

Click to expand...

It is useful to the degree that people have a shared understanding of what it means.

What would you propose instead?

Doppler9000 said:

and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Click to expand...

It means smaller than film medium format (120 film), as you likely know.

Nomenclature is often arbitrary. Wide, common usage is a reasonable goal, it seems.

I agree. In the industry and for the past decade at least, in all literature, articles, blogs, forums and camera stores, everyone knows what MFT, APSC and FF is and what it means. It is a useful frame of reference for those popular sensor sizes.

MF is of course a broader range (especially with all the film and large format).

But unless you are shooting Phase 1, a digital back or film, everyone knows that "MF" is a name for the popular GFX - Hasselblad sensor size that 95% of us are shooting.

I just say GFX in my posts here. Everyone knows what that sensor size is.

I'm glad to see "one inch" mostly go away. Phones killed those cameras, and it was a terrible descriptor because none of those small sensors were one inch.

Dystopia · Nov 2, 2023

No, I don't remember that.

paulraphael · Nov 2, 2023

Doppler9000 said:
paulraphael said:

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless

Click to expand...

It is useful to the degree that people have a shared understanding of what it means.

What would you propose instead?

35mm. Or 135. Or 24 x 36. You know, what people have been calling it for 90 years.

Doppler9000 said:
Doppler9000 said:

and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Click to expand...

It means smaller than film medium format (120 film), as you likely know.

But it's not smaller than medium format. For the last century, medium format has meant anything bigger than 24 x 36mm and smaller than 4 x 5". There have been a number of formats in this size range that don't use 120 film.

People calling it "crop frame" are broadly confused by what medium format even means. It's always referred to a range of formats. Just like small and large.

Doppler9000 said:
Nomenclature is often arbitrary. Wide, common usage is a reasonable goal, it seems.

Some nomenclature is more consistent, clear, and descriptive than others. The traditional conventions are confusing enough. But when they've been in place for the better part of a hundred years, there's little good in letting marketing departments re-educate people with new ones that are even less consistent, more confusing, and even misleading.

JimKasson · Nov 2, 2023

paulraphael said:
Doppler9000 said:

paulraphael said:

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless

Click to expand...

It is useful to the degree that people have a shared understanding of what it means.

What would you propose instead?

Click to expand...

35mm. Or 135.

Both of those specify the film stock, but not the size and shape of the exposed area. Some frame sizes that have been used with that stock: 24x36, 24x32, 24x18, 24.89x18.66, 21.95x18.6, 22x9.47, and 24x65.

Karl Huber · Nov 2, 2023

Valued Customer said:
Gave AI the mission and included medium and large format in query. Hope the references are accurate and not illusions.

“

The earliest references to the term "full frame" in photography and digital photography appear in the late 1990s and early 2000s. One of the earliest references is in a 1998 article in the magazine "Popular Photography" titled "The Next Generation of Digital Cameras." In the article, author Michael H. Reichmann writes about the advantages of full frame digital cameras, including their wider field of view and shallower depth of field.

Another early reference to the term "full frame" appears in a 2001 article in the magazine "Digital Photo Pro" titled "The Future of Digital Photography." In the article, author Thom Hogan writes about the trend towards larger sensors in digital cameras, and he predicts that full frame digital cameras will become the standard in the future.

The term "full frame" quickly became popular among photographers and camera manufacturers. In 2002, Canon released the EOS 1Ds, which was the first full frame digital camera to be commercially available. Since then, many other camera manufacturers have released full frame digital cameras, and they are now the most popular type of digital camera for professional and enthusiast photographers.

The terms "medium format" and "large format" have been used in photography for much longer than the term "full frame." Medium format film cameras were first introduced in the early 1900s, and large format film cameras were first introduced in the late 1800s.

The terms "medium format" and "large format" are still used today to describe digital cameras with sensors that are larger than 35mm. However, it is important to note that there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a medium format or large format digital camera. Some manufacturers use these terms to market their cameras, even though the sensors in their cameras are not significantly larger than 35mm.

Here are some specific examples of early references to the terms "full frame," "medium format," and "large format" in photography and digital photography:

"Popular Photography" magazine, 1998: "The Next Generation of Digital Cameras" by Michael H. Reichmann

"Digital Photo Pro" magazine, 2001: "The Future of Digital Photography" by Thom Hogan

"Canon EOS 1Ds" press release, 2002: "Canon Introduces World's First Full-Frame Digital SLR Camera"

"Kodak DCS Pro 14n" press release, 1996: "Kodak Announces New Professional 6x4.5cm Digital Camera"

"Phase One IQ180" press release, 2006: "Phase One Introduces World's First Medium Format Digital Back with 80 Megapixel Resolution"

I hope this helps!”- google bard

That's exactly why AI is not to be trusted nor relied upon.

Karl Huber · Nov 2, 2023

Doppler9000 said:
marco1974 said:

Stan Disbrow said:

The AI can't search stuff that isn't online.

Stan

Click to expand...

Exactly my main point.

Click to expand...

The problem is much deeper than that. AI cannot distinguish fact from error, and Wikipedia, for example, is full of errors.

Exactly. We will not accept references to Wikipedia data in dissertations.

Doppler9000 said:
“Garbage in, garbage out” is still in effect, but it is far worse if people can’t see that it’s garbage.

Those who have designed the AI mess don't care about that - as long as people believe their hold/version of the truth.

paulraphael · Nov 2, 2023

JimKasson said:
JimKasson said:

35mm. Or 135.

Click to expand...

Both of those specify the film stock, but not the size and shape of the exposed area. Some frame sizes that have been used with that stock: 24x36, 24x32, 24x18, 24.89x18.66, 21.95x18.6, 22x9.47, and 24x65.

Certainly true. But for the last whole lotta decades, if you said 35mm camera most people understood it as 24x36.*

The conventions were inconsistent and confused. I'm just saying that they don't benefit from being made even more inconsistent and confused.

*In still photography. In motion pictures it could mean anything.

jean-pierre peretti · Nov 2, 2023

Greg7579 said:
Rich42 said:

paulraphael said:

I'd be happy to see "full frame" disappear from the lingo. It's useless and ahistorical.

And it leads to some people insisting that Fuji and GFX make "crop frame medium format" cameras, which means literally nothing.

Click to expand...

Agree on both counts.

I dislike the term "crop frame camera" for any size camera. The camera is its own size.

Period.

"Crop frame" gives rise to the concept of "lens equivalence." A "concept" which I intensely dislike.

A 50mm f/1.8 lens on an APS-C camera isn't equivalent to anything "full frame."

It's a 50mm lens on the APS-C camera with all the specific characteristics of that focal length and that maximum aperture on that camera size.

While those of us who worked with 50mm lenses on "35mm" cameras, and 80mm lenses on "2-1/4 x 2-1/4" cameras, and 165mm lenses on "4x5" cameras and 300mm lenses on "8x10" cameras understood that those were all "normal" lenses on those cameras, none of us ever expected that the images from those cameras would "be equivalent" in any way imaginable.

Click to expand...

Well said and I agree. But as a guy who shot a lot of Fuji X APSC, FF and GFX, I am guilty of doing the equivalency in my head. After all of these years I still think in "FF" 35mm film terms. When I shoot 100mm with a GF lens, it pops into my head that is an 80. When I used to shoot 10omm with Fuji X, it popped into my head that it was 160 field of view. When I shoot 100mm with FF, it pops into my head that it is really a 100.

I don't know why. I just can't help it.

But you are right.

Agreed too (Rich and Greg)

Only that "When I shoot 100mm with FF, it pops into my head that it is really a 100." Slightly different : Nothing pops for me cause I'm home ;o)

JPierre

Stan Disbrow · Nov 3, 2023

Hi,

It's not the film that determines crop or not. It's the lenses. They are designed for a specific field of view for any given format. Such as the Pentax lenses for their 645 or 67 series cameras. Use those on something else and one has some thinking to do v using them on what they were native to.

Once they decided to stick a 44x33mm sensor into a 645 body they created a crop frame camera v the 645 film one. So the term is both accurate and correct.

Then Pentax made some new lenses specifically for the smaller sensor. And now those are not crop frame lenses.

And the small format makers did the same. They had originally made use of the lenses for the film cameras, and so the digital made use of a cropped area of those lenses. Later on, they came out with new lenses specifically for the smaller frame and so no crop.

Ironically, Nikon at least already had film cameras for the APS format and lenses designed to give the same FoV as the 135 format counterparts. But they chose not to use that series of products for digital. The Pronea bodies and IX lenses.

Except Kodak. They made two models of digital using the Pronea series. They didn't sell well.

The bottom line is, I don't ever see the end of the use of Crop to refer to using lenses designed for a given film or sensor size on a unit sporting a smaller sensor.

Stan

Stan Disbrow · Nov 3, 2023

Hi,

Keep in mind that 35mm is referring to the use of the 135 film in a motion picture camera. Not a still one. And I bet dollars to donuts that Kodak slapped the 135 moniker onto the film stock because it was intended for a motion picture camera.

The (mis)use of the 35mm nomenclature to still cameras is simply a carry over. It is still a dimension of the film if you include the sprocket holes for the motion picture camera drive system. But 35mm has no relationship to the 36mm exposed area of the still cameras.

Just another example of misuse of terminology which can be found in all sorts of areas, not just our camera gear.

Stan

paulraphael · Nov 3, 2023

Stan Disbrow said:
Hi,

The (mis)use of the 35mm nomenclature to still cameras is simply a carry over. It is still a dimension of the film if you include the sprocket holes for the motion picture camera drive system. But 35mm has no relationship to the 36mm exposed area of the still cameras.

This doesn't bug me, because for a long stretch, just about every camera that used 35mm film was 24x36 format. The shorthand made sense, and referred to the actual name of the film you had to buy.

But "full frame" is practically meaningless. It doesn't differentiate 24x36 from any other format; only from the smaller digital formats that were around for a few years before the industry figured out how to profitably make 24x36 sensors.

It doesn't help that those earlier digital formats were also given meaningless names by marketing departments.

Stan Disbrow · Nov 3, 2023

Hi,

Well, APS was a film name and APS-C and APS-H were two of three standard image areas of the APS film. APS-C recorded shot data while APS-H did not and so a larger area for the image. There was also APS-P which did not wind up as a digital sensor capture area. A panoramic scheme. Think of it as a baby 6x17....

And the APS stayed in the can for processing and printing and then storage. A pretty cool idea, actually. I was a tad skeptical that it offered enough image capture area v 135 myself. Heck, I have thought that 35mm film was already too small, hence 645. But I digress.

So, what this means is....the digital sensors which were APS, both C and H, were Full Frame for their respective nomenclatures.

What is different here is those sensors were pared with lens mounts from 135 format, or 35mm (which you prefer and I can talk both ways) and not with the lens mounts for the APS film cameras. Except, as I noted, Kodak, who did make two models using actual APS cameras. And they could mount actual APS lenses.

The real irony here is, the Advanced Photo System was intended by both the film and camera makers to replace 35mm as the main consumer photographic system. And digital sensors then stole that thunder and killed off APS. Save for the two imaging area dimensions which were then used by those digital usurpers. (!)

Stan

--
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Greg7579 · Nov 3, 2023

paulraphael said:
But "full frame" is practically meaningless.

Disagree Paul. Everyone knows what FF is in the digital world and it has important meaning and is a nice reference point. You are never going to get that cat back in the bag.

Film? I shot it for 25 years, but very few people care about film references anymore.

MFT, APSC, FF and MF are understood by everyone. Well, there can be some argument on MF, but for 95% of us, we know it is the GFX Hassy size sensor.

You guys clinging to your film sizes and history and trying to equate it to the most widely available sensor sizes on the market today for photographers are just being nostalgic

Full frame ... full frame...

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