36x36 mm cmos sensor

[HughHowey]

If the "rectangle" maxes out the circle of light from the lens (and why wouldn't they do it this way?), then a square would have a smaller "wide" side.

That's exactly right.

No shit? I was right about something? Wait 'til I tell my wife about this!!

 

[aldvan]

I think that some Panasonic models like the GH2 do the thing you describe to some extend.
It is called "multi-aspect sensor" but the sensor's total surface area is never used to capture a single image.

My backup Leica D-Lux 4 let me choose among 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9. I don't know how that choice is made possible (mechanically or electronically), but, to be honest for me that is not one of the little camera's main features...

 

[sjaudio]

I don't see much logic in Canon going for a square sensor, but how about a 4x5? It's approximately the same surface area as the current full frame sensor and if Canon is really going after the medium format crowd with their next 1Ds, it would make more sense to go with that ratio. What do you guys think?

 

[jhpeterson]

I don't see much logic in Canon going for a square sensor, but how about a 4x5? It's approximately the same surface area as the current full frame sensor and if Canon is really going after the medium format crowd with their next 1Ds, it would make more sense to go with that ratio. What do you guys think?

I, for one, have never cared much for the 4:5 ratio. It's boring, trite, too close to square for my liking. Maybe that's because I've primarily worked in the 35mm format, and have long appreciated its close to "golden rectangle" proportions.
But the real beauty of a square sensor would be its versatility. The idea of never having to turn the camera to change from a horizontal to a vertical shot is very appealing to me, with the ability to produce a usable image in a wide variety of fomats an added bonus.

 

[Heidrun]

I would love to have a square 36x36 sensor. I think it would suite my pictures very well

 

[ReyMorlu]

Hey guys!! What r u speaking about???

A square shaped digital is my dream, since I sold out two years ago, all my Hasselblad equipement... I miss up the beautifull and interesting composition capabillities that a square gives.

BUT I do not know if you have noticed a few technical little problems, that MAKES ABSOLUTELLY IMPOSIBLE to still using EOS lenses (that we use nowadays in our equipements) in a ficticious 36x36 sensor in special way with reflex design.
FF Lens coverage circle is 43.26mm (I have to admit that a 600mm lens in example has much more but... impossible to be used in practice, because of mount)
36x36mm needs 50.9 circle diameter! not covered by lenses... then impossible!! :'(
Other option 30.5x30.5mm... OMG yeah! This might be... but... what about the mirror cell?? :-[ we have to increase the size of the damn mirror and then, the camera body! about 6mm deeper increasing then distance from focal plane & lens rear mount... like an extension tube, if makro are your expectations OK, but for the rest of us ¡What a shit! No infinite focus is a hard lack... Isn't it? LOL
The last possibillity is -I think- 24x24 tini format , in a special trial camera that I'm sure will never comes to light.

Why I sold my Hassy?... because I live in Canary Islands and no 120 film & lab developement!!
And moreover, I do not pay for a digiback 11.000$, not crazy enough!

 

[adamdoesmovies]

Hey guys!! What r u speaking about???

A square shaped digital is my dream, since I sold out two years ago, all my Hasselblad equipement... I miss up the beautifull and interesting composition capabillities that a square gives.

BUT I do not know if you have noticed a few technical little problems, that MAKES ABSOLUTELLY IMPOSIBLE to still using EOS lenses (that we use nowadays in our equipements) in a ficticious 36x36 sensor in special way with reflex design.
FF Lens coverage circle is 43.26mm (I have to admit that a 600mm lens in example has much more but... impossible to be used in practice, because of mount)
36x36mm needs 50.9 circle diameter! not covered by lenses... then impossible!! :'(
Other option 30.5x30.5mm... OMG yeah! This might be... but... what about the mirror cell?? :-[ we have to increase the size of the damn mirror and then, the camera body! about 6mm deeper increasing then distance from focal plane & lens rear mount... like an extension tube, if makro are your expectations OK, but for the rest of us ¡What a shit! No infinite focus is a hard lack... Isn't it? LOL
The last possibillity is -I think- 24x24 tini format , in a special trial camera that I'm sure will never comes to light.

Why I sold my Hassy?... because I live in Canary Islands and no 120 film & lab developement!!
And moreover, I do not pay for a digiback 11.000$, not crazy enough!

You should have sold the body, kept the lenses, and gotten a converter. I ended up doing this instead of selling my mamiya, and its old manual focus lenses now have a way of making pretty much everything else in my kit seem inferior.

 

[jeremymerriam]

I doubt people will do a full systems change due to price.

Truer words never spoken. Price is about the LAST thing to enter into the equation if you are actually talking about the tools with which you make your living.

It took a true game changer like the Nikon D3 to get me to even THINK about switching systems. Several of the other Canon shooters in my area were looking longingly at the images the Nikon guys were getting in the crappy light situations, but nobody I know actually switched. Most people choke on the pricetag, and some of us who are heavy old-school manual focusers can't abide the idea of having to re-learn how to do it "backwards."

People like me who work in news/editorial/event photography should be in the ideal target market to switch to the Nikon D3 due to it's low-light chops. But, frankly, this area does not pay exceptionally well, so for most of us it's just too painful to consider dumping the 10 G's or more it would cost to switch even if you sell your current gear at a good price. And while the D3 is better in low light, Canon's are still quite good.

At the other end of the spectrum, the heavy duty commercial people who are raking in thousands per day don't HAVE to switch (at least not for the low-light capability) because they help themselves to light from a phalanx of Elinchroms. It may be a different story for hobbyists who may make their living in dentistry or lawyering, or the ones whose "system" is just a body and one or two lenses, but aside from that, there's not a whole lot of switching going on.

Legitimate/professional commercial photographers are not shooting with SLR bodies. They are shooting medium format.

 

[Heidrun]

Dont know why people are saying that you cant have a 36x36 sensor. Now it is 36x24 , and a lens is round.. so i dont see the problem here.
I want a square one, and i want it bad

 

[bikersbeard]

read the above posts, it explains why you cant have 36x36..

 

[gferdinandsen]

Out of curiousity, why can't you crop to a 1:1 ratio in Photoshop? I currently use a 5D2, on my PIXMA9500, it cannot print a full resolution (13x19) so cropping will not cause any noticable pixalization (much less printing an 8x8 or 8x10, or 8x12). It's much cheaper to change in post-processing than make a sensor that is significantly larger.

There really seems to be a lot of "I want therefore Canon should make". I learned to shoot with 35mm, when you learn on film/transparancies, you learn learn how to make do with what you have, not how to make the technology adapt to what you want

 

[dougkerr]

anybody sees any chance for a Canon EOS cmos-sensor that says goodbye to the 24x36mm "full-frame" limitation and actually provides the maximum format that the EOS optical system allows?

From my understanding, a 36x36 mm square format would be handled by any EF-lense without any issues. The EOS optical system is a circle, right - not an ellipse.

The largest square format that the current EF lens image circle (when an actual circle) could handle is 30.6 x 30.6 mm.

In some of the lenses, the image boundary is not quite a circle. Then a slightly smaller square format is all that could be handled.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Rocky]

Dont know why people are saying that you cant have a 36x36 sensor. Now it is 36x24 , and a lens is round.. so i dont see the problem here.
I want a square one, and i want it bad

There will not be enough room for the movement of the reflex mirror. The existing EF lens will just clear the movement of the mirror for a 24mm high sensor. now you are asking another 12mm extra.

 

[Heidrun]

Dont know why people are saying that you cant have a 36x36 sensor. Now it is 36x24 , and a lens is round.. so i dont see the problem here.
I want a square one, and i want it bad

There will not be enough room for the movement of the reflex mirror. The existing EF lens will just clear the movement of the mirror for a 24mm high sensor. now you are asking another 12mm extra.

Skip the mirror and make an electronic one, That will also elimiinate problem wioth the mirrorshake

 

[Rocky]

Dont know why people are saying that you cant have a 36x36 sensor. Now it is 36x24 , and a lens is round.. so i dont see the problem here.
I want a square one, and i want it bad

There will not be enough room for the movement of the reflex mirror. The existing EF lens will just clear the movement of the mirror for a 24mm high sensor. now you are asking another 12mm extra.

Skip the mirror and make an electronic one, That will also elimiinate problem wioth the mirrorshake

There is only ONE TS-E lens will give you 36 X36 mm coverage. Do you think that Canon will make a camera that is based on ONE lens only and with the slow AF and view finder of a point and shoot. Will you buy this camera.? The standard coverage of FE lens is 30.4 MM square.

 

[jhpeterson]

It's no April Fool's joke that I'm dredging up this old post.
I've been away most all the last three month on shoots, but found some time to think more about this. The more I did, the more convinced I am this idea is worth pursuing.
Since the price of sensors keeps coming down, it's only a matter of time before a 36x36 one costs no more than a 24x36 does at present. And, with the mirrorless movement continuing to gain more followers, it likely won't be long before we see electronic viewfinders in pro-level DSLRs. Doing without the mirror will solve one of the problems that has limited what image size we can produce from our cameras, as the current configuration of 35-mm style cameras is pretty much maxxed-out at 24mm in the short dimension.
So, the only remaining significant obstacle appears to be lens coverage. I don't, at least at the moment, expect to see many lenses capable of delivering 36x36mm images without SOME vignetting. But, if we can accept a certain amount of fall-off, I think we've opened the door to many exciting aspect-ratio possibilities. After all, how many times is the final image we REALLY want a square?
Permit me a few moments here to make some calculations. The diagonal of 24x36mm image measures just a little over 43.2mm. I'd like to think every lens that produces an acceptable image for full-frame 3:2 cameras covers at least this, and some a bit more. This would also give us 30.6x30.6mm for a square, 26.9x33.7 for 5:4, almost 25.7x34.3 at 4:3 and, for those of us into panoramic vistas, 19.4x38.8 for 2:1 and 13.7x41.1 at 3:1.
Maybe, what we would really want to see is a sensor that allows us to take full advantage of the optics we've paid some seriously money for. Say one, 45mm in diameter, more or less, since I suspect much of our glass covers somewhat more than it was designed for. And, if it doesn't quite measure up, we can always stretch things a bit with software.

 

[Spooky]

you're right, thinking outside the box! There are quite a few obstacles but non are impossible, maybe expensive though.

Regarding the mirror, how about a semi-transparent (pellicle) as was in the old EOS1 (RT?), that would remain fixed. I don't know what the mount - sensor distance is and this may limit this. An electronic finder would be ok but we wouldn't get the fast AF.
Looking through the old posts, most miss the fact that you crop for the final result, not end up with a vignetted square image. The lens baffles could be removed?
How about a new body, waist level finder and rotating back for our EF lenses?

 

[Daniel Flather]

Would the 36x36mm sensor/format have issues with lens hoods? I'm looking at my 24mm lens right now, and I think with the hood on you'd have issues. They are petal cut hoods for a reason, right?

 

[jhpeterson]

you're right, thinking outside the box!

Seems like I occasionally put my engineering school education to good use!
Indeed, the square sensor would be a boon to any photographer who needed to quickly shift from horizontal to vertical, or vice versa. And, since I'm left-eyed, especially true for me. It always presented interesting challenges to my picture taking, going back to film days when I'd have to take the camera from my eyes to advance to the next frame. Built-in motors made the problem irrelevant, but to this day I've found the vertical button on grips and pro bodies to be rather useless, as it's in a most awkward location. (On the plus side, I'll bet the way I have to hold the camera for verticals makes me inherently steadier than my right-eyed colleagues.)
I mentioned some time back that I think some presets for different formats could be included, at least for JPEG files, much like that for image size and levels of compression. Of course, most all your better image editing software now does this rather easily.
As for the lens hood issue, it seems a relatively minor problem. And, while the cost for some of them is no longer small change, at least in the case of the supertelephotos with hoods that run as much as what one can pay for a decent lens, the last I looked they were all circular in shape.