It's Time to Dump the 1990s Term "Full Frame"

[Sator-Photography]

The return of medium format to the mainstream of photography seems to have created a huge problem with nomenclature related to the advertising term "full frame". In the film era, 35mm format was called "small format" to distinguish it from "medium format" and "large format". The digital revolution changed all of that, largely wiping out medium format, and rendering large format extinct. At first, even small format digital sensors were expensive, so much so that 35mm format sensor cameras like the original Canon 1Ds (with its 11MP sensor) cost around $8000. Most mere mortals could only afford an APS-C or APS-H format sensor camera.

 

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos1ds/22

 

Price - body kit

(no lens)  

USA $ 7,999

UK £ 6,999 (including VAT)

Europe € 8,000

 

Because medium format largely disappeared from the consciousness of most photographers, the idea that a 35mm format digital camera was something amazingly aspirational came about. No longer was 35mm format, “small format”, a “miniature format” considered suitable for amateurs or for reportage, instead it became fetishised as an extraordinary large format called “full frame”. Forgotten were the days when photo editors would reject 35mm format submissions in many genres unless it was in medium format or larger. Only serious pros could afford to buy “full frame” digital cameras. The average amateur could only afford to buy a “subframe” format camera. I can still remember looking at the Canon website 10-15 years ago and looking with awe at their “full frame” cameras outside of my budget.

 

The trouble is that medium format never really disappeared. It was just priced way out of the majority of people’s budgets. While many iconic medium format firms like Rollei went bust, victims of the digital revolution that ran them over, a couple of companies did survive. Now as fabrication costs of medium format sensors start to gradually come down, medium format is slowly coming back to life and returning to the mainstream. However, it is still not in the consciousness of most photographers for whom various forms of “small format” sensor sizes are all they have ever known.

 

This comes from the Phase One website:

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Note this passage in particular:

 

Quote

The full frame medium format sensors found in XF IQ4 Camera Systems, 1.5x the size of crop sensor mirrorless medium format, allow you to capture more data, providing more detail and impressive results so that you can achieve your creative vision straight out of the camera. With the expanded output flexibility provided by the high resolution and up to 15 stops of dynamic range, your workflow options grow exponentially.

 

 

You can see that there is a nomenclature issue going on here. In the language of digital medium format, the term “full frame” means a sensor size (53.7 x 40.2mm) similar to the 56 x 42mm film frame size of 645 film medium format. Medium format film sizes included 6 x 4.5cm (645 format), 6 x 6 (square format), 6 x 7cm (670), 6 x 8cm (680) and 6 x 9cm format. There were also panoramic films even wider than that.

 

6x4.5  56mm x 42mm 2352 sq.mm eg Pentax 45, Mamiya 45, Hasselblad H1, etc.

6x6     56mm x 56mm 3136 sq.mm eg Hasselblad 200/500, Rollei TLR, Yashicamat TLR, etc.

6x7     56mm x 67mm 3752 sq.mm eg Pentax 67, Mamiya RB67/RZ67, etc.

6x8     56mm x 75mm 4200 sq.mm

 

Table taken from:

 

http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/filmformats.html

 

Fuji only fairly recently ended production of film medium format cameras like this one:

 

You can see that it looks like a GFX50R, only the GFX series has a much smaller “crop sensor”.

 

What Phase One calls “crop sensor mirrorless medium format” refers to a 44 x 33mm size format that did not exist in the film era. Calling it “mirrorless medium format” is also going to be a problem because it’s only a matter of time before we see mirrorless 645 format digital cameras. However, for most digital natives, “medium format” is so off their radar and out-of-sight-out-of-mind that they still think in the 1990’s advertising nomenclature which fetishizes 35mm format as that awe-inspiringly aspirational thing in the sky called “full frame”. I also suspect that calling 645 format digital medium format “full frame” is probably going to be a problem in the future when fabrication costs come down enough to allow the rebirth of 670 format in the digital age. But that is still a long way off (5-12 years perhaps).

 

To be honest, I had originally hoped that the Fuji GFX cameras would be what Phase One calls “full frame” i.e. 645 format rather than the 4433 (44 x 33mm) crop format. Calling the crop sensor format “4433” makes the most sense because it follows the conventions of the medium format nomenclature of the film era (645, 6x6, 670 etc). It’s also descriptive of the sensor size and avoids the use of cute “pet names” for formats coined by advertising firms. Other nicknames for the format like “mini medium format”, “super full frame format” also cause headaches. What are the midi and maxi medium formats? And what is 645 full frame medium format called if 4433 is “super full frame”—“super duper full frame” perhaps? In which case, if someone releases a 670 format digital sensor, what then—“super duper whoopee full frame” perhaps? Life is just much easier when you dump this dated and entirely historical 1990s advertising term, “full frame” altogether. It is simply too confusing to call 35mm small format “full frame” while calling 4433 medium format a “crop sensor”. With it we should also dump the “crop sensor” terminology, except perhaps when you can mount a lens format larger than the sensor format (e.g. Canon 35mm format EF lens on an EF mount APS-C body) where you are using only a “crop” of the full image circle of the lens. That would mean that the Fuji X system is a full frame system because unlike CaNikon DSLR systems, it is designed to be used exclusively with APS-C format lenses. This would mean that the Pentax 645 digital system is not full frame because it uses a 645 format mount from the film era but with a 4433 crop sensor that is a format smaller than the full frame lens image circle of a Pentax 645 mount.

 

Life is also much easier when you dump the historical advertising hype to just call 35mm format what it is: “35mm format”. Many of us do just that. For example:

 

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2019/03/04/review-the-fujifilm-gf-100-200mm-f5-6-r-lm-ois-wr/

 

The trouble is that CaNikon (CanSoNikon?) advertising still pushes the 1990s idea that 35mm is somehow this awesome, mindbogglingly oversized format called “full frame”. People are too brainwashed by CaNikon. In their CaNikon addled wet dreams, people probably fantasise that it's the same size as a Phase One “full frame” sensor and hence bigger than the sensor on a Fuji GFX all because CaNikon touts it as “full frame”.

 

Some medium format people look down upon the 4433 “crop sensor mirrorless medium format”. However, to be honest, I am not sure I would have been able to afford the GFX50s if it were “full frame” (645 format). Even if I could afford it, I would not have taken it on my travels as far and wide around the world as I have my GFX50s: both the camera and the lenses would have been much bigger if they were “full frame”. I am very happy with my GFX50s, easily the best camera I have ever owned.

[Sator-Photography]

To put things simply, it is time to charge CanSoNikon with grossly misleading advertising in calling 35mm format, "full frame". If they use this terminology, they must clarify that it means "full frame SMALL FORMAT" but they are never going to admit the truth of the fact that 35mm is just "small format". They prefer instead to make sly insinuations that their camera sensors are as a large as Phase One and Hasselblad "full frame" and thus by underhanded implication, larger (more "full")  than the 4433 crop medium format sensor used by Fuji and Pentax. This simply reflects the influence on the industry of CaNikon in brainwashing the masses into a distorted and blatantly false 35mm-centred view of the world, one that fetishizes 35mm small format as some sort of arrivist "full frame" nonsense. It's time for consumers to refuse to swallow the CaNikon advertising propaganda by taking these falsehoods apart.

[bergat]

6x6 medium format

44x33 small medium format

35mm film format

aps-c small film format

4/3" Spy format

[Sator-Photography]

Anything up to 35mm is traditionally considered "small format". Next step up, medium format then large format. Simple: small - medium - large.

In the 1990s, a 35mm format digital sensor seemed HUGE, even "full frame". But sensors are shrinking...at least in price. In 2019, small format has once more become small again. Medium format is back! 35mm is now just another format.

As for pet names for formats, there have been plenty of those and there will be plenty more. Advertisers once managed to get the moniker "Ideal Format" to stick with 6x7/670 format back in the 1960-70s.

From Popular Photography Jan-Nov 1991:

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