Wishful thinking: Nikon FX mirrorless to sport square sensor

The latest rumor concerning the size of the new "Z" mount (if that's really what it's called) on Nikon's upcoming full-frame mirrorless camera pegs its throat diameter at 55mm, compared to the venerable F mount's 44mm. Why such a large increase, given that the sensor will remain FX?

 

Well, one possible use for the much larger opening is to support a square sensor with dimensions of 36mm x 36mm. This is the same width as Nikon's current FX sensors, but because of the increased height, the diagonal of this sensor would be about 51mm, compared to about 43mm for a 36mm x 24mm sensor. Unlike the F mount, a 55mm Z mount would easily accommodate a sensor with a 51mm diagonal without clipping the corners, provided the lens projected an image circle at least 51mm in diameter.

 

Why bother with a 36mm x 36mm square sensor? Because, for one thing, it would allow cropping photos to any aspect ratio between 1:1 and 3:2 with no loss of quality compared to the current 3:2 standard. On the contrary, image quality would only go up as you decrease the width-to-height ratio from 3:2 to anything down to 1:1.

 

Another big benefit of a square sensor is that you would not need to rotate the camera to take a portrait-orientation photo. Imagine that!

 

Would it not be fantastic to be able to select among 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 1:1, 4:5, 3:4, and 2:3 aspect ratios (that is, from 3:2 landscape to 2:3 portrait and anything in between) in-camera with the twist of a dial? Could the knob on the side of the fake pentaprism in the teased photos of the Nikon FX mirrorless camera actually be, rather than a diopter adjustment as has been presumed, precisely such an aspect ratio selector? With an electronic viewfinder, it would be trivial for the camera to preview any selected aspect ratio in the finder by simply masking the parts of the photo that will be cropped out.

 

In fact, the best implementation of selectable aspect ratio would have the camera always record a square image using the full sensor area, and simply write an aspect ratio tag in the EXIF data. This would allow you to change the aspect ratio after the fact, in post. That would be incredibly cool.

 

What do you think? Is a square sensor in the offing for Nikon FX mirrorless? Or is this just a fool's dream?

Edited August 13, 2018 by chulster

What do you think? Is a square sensor in the offing for Nikon FX mirrorless? Or is this just a fool's dream?

Highly unlikely scenario. For some time to come, Nikon will rely heavily on adapting existing F-mount lenses which don't cover the 36x36 sensor and would also still require you to turn the camera from landscape to portrait orientation since many have masks in the rear and tulip-shaped hoods up front. Furthermore, square appears to be a rather unpopular aspect ratio - so utilize a more expensive sensor just to avoid having to rotate the camera? Lenses designed for a 51mm diagonal will be larger and more expensive but because of the rather small increase in sensor area, improvements in image quality will be small. One criticism leveled at the current Fuji, Hasselblad, Pentax, Leica etc. "medium format" (aka about 44x33 or 45x30 sensors) is that the performance gain of the larger sensor is incommensurate with the cost of the camera and lenses and furthermore quite small compared to FX. And the 36x36 sensor has an even smaller area than the 44x33 one.

 

Nikon might intend to eventually place a most likely non-square medium format sensor into a body that sports the new mount - but I wouldn't expect that to be anytime soon. And certainly not for the camera they are about to reveal in 11 days. One leaked image shows the lens with a tulip-shaped lens hood - incompatible with a square sensor - and the Nikon press release specifically mentions FX.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Dieter Schaefer

Interesting thought.

Like shooting a small Hassleblad :D

FX means 24x36mm. A 36mm square sensor will cost a lot more and will make all 100 million Nikon F mount lenses unusable.

FX means 24x36mm. A 36mm square sensor will cost a lot more and will make all 100 million Nikon F mount lenses unusable.

How so? Could the camera not simply crop the image to 3:2 when an F-mount lens is mounted?

Lenses designed for a 51mm diagonal will be larger and more expensive

 

True. If Nikon plans to market their mirrorless as being able to use smaller, lighter lenses than current FX ones, making the lenses able to cover a 19% longer diagonal would most likely negate those possible savings.

How so? Could the camera not simply crop the image to 3:2 when an F-mount lens is mounted?

Then you would be paying a lot more for a larger sensor and then crop to 3:2 most of the time, since there are so many F mount lenses out there. Might as well stick to a 24x36mm sensor.

Then you would be paying a lot more for a larger sensor and then crop to 3:2 most of the time, since there are so many F mount lenses out there. Might as well stick to a 24x36mm sensor.

 

This topic does not treat with the economically rational. It is about something that I think would be undeniably nice to have, if we didn't have to be realistic all the time. Hence the heading, "Wishful Thinking."

 

Will you find some way to deny that a square sensor and post-selectable aspect ratios are things that it would be nice to have? Or will you simply say that wishful thinking is pointless and foolish? To which point, I have no answer.

I thought the patent mentions a throat diameter of 49mm, so the radius would be 1.5mm greater than Sony E mount (which some third party manufacturers criticised for being too narrow for FX). "Measuring" relative distances from a video is simply a lot of guesswork and is unlikely to lead to anything accurate.

 

The issue is simply that the majority of applications call for a rectangular (not square) image and it is inefficient use of very expensive sensor area to always make it from an image captured with a square sensor. The largest square that you can use FX lenses with is 24mm x 24mm. There may be image outside of the 24x36mm area but many lenses have rectangular masks to cut down excess light causing flare. Today many want to do video and 4K video has 1.9 : 1 aspect ratio. Laptop screens typically are now 1.7 : 1, I think. Common paper sizes have approximately 1.4:1 aspect ratio. The 1.5:1 aspect ratio of the FX sensor is in my opinion a good practical compromise that leads to relatively efficient use of sensor area in a broad variety of applications.

 

A square sensor of 36mm x 36mm would lead to a larger camera, larger lenses and higher cost. If you use vertical grips or L brackets with rectangular sensors, those costs would be avoided (if you don't need the boost and longer battery life given by the larger battery e.g. in the D850). In the time of roll film, various aspect ratios could be accommodated; 1:1, 6:7, 3:4, but also 3:2 and 17:6. With digital the costs of making an unusual sensor size would probably be very high. If you want to shoot square, you can do that with the D850 (it has a 1:1 crop mode) with 24mm x 24mm sensor area. Anything more is medium format with medium format costs.

Historically, square formats have found little favour, although Fox Talbot's pioneering little 'mousetrap' cameras took a square of sensitised paper I believe.

 

However, after photography became established and mainstream, aspect ratios in the region of 4:3 became the accepted standard. This followed a centuries old tradition of painters using approximately the same aspect ratio for most of their canvases, when they could just as easily have chosen a square or letterbox format.

 

Incidentally, by the time a handling margin is cropped from a 10x8 or 5x4 negative, it's actual picture area is very close to 4:3.

 

Things jog along like this for about a century. Then some bright idiot comes along and decides to stick another camera on top of an already perfectly functional camera to act as a viewfinder, and the ridiculous TLR is born, which naturally needs a square format, since it can't be used 'sideways'. Despite the TLRs inexplicable popularity, most of its users end up printing their pictures on standard rectangular paper.

 

In the wake of this aberrant design, Mr Hasselblad decides to do away with the second parasitic camera and the waist-level SLR emerges, but again it's too unwieldy to use sideways, and retains the square format. Yet again, most of its users simply crop the surplus-to-requirements bits of picture away in printing. Excepting a few OCD adherents who champion the born-of-necessity square.

 

A host of other makers jump on the bandwagon and follow in Mr Hasselblad's wake.

 

Let's not forget Oskar Barnack, who prior to this has cobbled a little camera together in his shed that takes the now common 35mm cine film. He could, of course, have followed tradition and made the aspect ratio close to 4:3, like the cine film he was keen on using, but no! Dear Oskar decides to use 2 cine frames stuck together, and another dopey and unneeded format is conjured up. Some fanatical adherents again turn this overlong rectangle into an uncroppable sacred cow.

 

So what can we learn from history? Maybe that photographers will just use whatever picture format comes with their camera, and that some of them will take its designer's whim as holy writ?

 

Or maybe we shouldn't ignore those centuries of painters that chose to use a modestly oblong canvas.

 

I would be all in favour of returning to a modest 4:3 aspect ratio, which can be easily cropped square or letterbox with little waste should you wish. But please, lets not inflict the abominable wasteful square on everybody!

Edited August 13, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

4:3 is available in Micro Four Thirds cameras as well as the smallest digital medium format sensors (33mm x 44mm). The AN paper sizes follow the 1.41:1 aspect ratio and if you leave a narrow equal width margin around the photograph, a 2:3 aspect ratio image fits nicely on these papers. Given the widescreen format's popularity now in television and computer monitors, I think there really is no great anomaly in available sensor aspect ratios and practical uses of photography and video.

 

The rectangular sensored cameras have the drawback that vertical images can be less stable (the tripod is able to hold the camera better against vertical travel shutter curtain induced vibrations than horizontally traveling curtains), but electronic shutter (either front curtain or both curtains) is making its way into still photography and this problem is then avoided, and vertical images should be as sharp as horizontals.

Edited August 13, 2018 by ilkka_nissila

I guess if larger sensors become more economical to manufacture in time, medium format may eventually become more popular than it is currently - but on the other hand, some think that the progression is towards smaller sensors. ;-) You can never find agreement on a topic about equipment on the Internet. ;-) With MF, the losses from cropping to an unusual aspect ratio are perhaps less a consideration than with small formats, but nonetheless then you may lose the advantage in absolute image quality that you paid so dearly for.

The latest rumor concerning the size of the new "Z" mount (if that's really what it's called) on Nikon's upcoming full-frame mirrorless camera pegs its throat diameter at 55mm, compared to the venerable F mount's 44mm. Why such a large increase, given that the sensor will remain FX?

 

Well, one possible use for the much larger opening is to support a square sensor with dimensions of 36mm x 36mm. This is the same width as Nikon's current FX sensors, but because of the increased height, the diagonal of this sensor would be about 51mm, compared to about 43mm for a 36mm x 24mm sensor. Unlike the F mount, a 55mm Z mount would easily accommodate a sensor with a 51mm diagonal without clipping the corners, provided the lens projected an image circle at least 51mm in diameter.

 

Why bother with a 36mm x 36mm square sensor? Because, for one thing, it would allow cropping photos to any aspect ratio between 1:1 and 3:2 with no loss of quality compared to the current 3:2 standard. On the contrary, image quality would only go up as you decrease the width-to-height ratio from 3:2 to anything down to 1:1.

 

Another big benefit of a square sensor is that you would not need to rotate the camera to take a portrait-orientation photo. Imagine that!

 

Would it not be fantastic to be able to select among 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 1:1, 4:5, 3:4, and 2:3 aspect ratios (that is, from 3:2 landscape to 2:3 portrait and anything in between) in-camera with the twist of a dial? Could the knob on the side of the fake pentaprism in the teased photos of the Nikon FX mirrorless camera actually be, rather than a diopter adjustment as has been presumed, precisely such an aspect ratio selector? With an electronic viewfinder, it would be trivial for the camera to preview any selected aspect ratio in the finder by simply masking the parts of the photo that will be cropped out.

 

In fact, the best implementation of selectable aspect ratio would have the camera always record a square image using the full sensor area, and simply write an aspect ratio tag in the EXIF data. This would allow you to change the aspect ratio after the fact, in post. That would be incredibly cool.

 

What do you think? Is a square sensor in the offing for Nikon FX mirrorless? Or is this just a fool's dream?

 

I won't argue on the pros and cons but I am sure that is not the case. The sensor will be around 24x36mm (around as I am also quite sure that it's not exactly 24x36 like all Nikon FX DSLR).

Joe!

I think Oscar used 2 frames because he want to avoid having to design the camera to advance the film vertically like a movie camera.

It's always been a historical 'thing' that viewing screens are landscape to emulate the way we see outside at range and most printed material is portrait as that's how the eye scans without moving the head close-up.

 

Square would just mess that all up...;)

I would be all in favour of returning to a modest 4:3 aspect ratio

Reading this made me realize that I hardly ever crop my image into a 4:3 ratio - which speaks strongly for me staying away from m4/3 cameras (and most of the " medium format" cameras with the exception of the Leica S). When I crop, then my most used aspect ratio is 4:5; I even use 16:9 more often than 4:3. And rarely 1:1 (but still more often than 4:3) - is there even any digital camera right now with a square sensor? I recall from the photokina 2016 Hasselblads V1D concept - which apparently has not made it into production yet.

The standard FX shape is very close to the classical "Golden Ratio," 1.618 or 2:3.2. It's 2500 years old and not going away any time soon. Not many people find a square image partiularly aesthetic, and it's seldom used except in an attempt to be "different." The square format was chosen for medium format cameras which could not be easily turned from "landscape" to "portrait" position, including Hasselblad and Rolleiflex TLRs. Large 6x7 cameras, like the Mamiya RZ and RB, have a rotating back. That works best in a camera the size of a shoe box.

 

It seems pointless for a small format camera lto use a square sensor, then crop it to something not square. 36x36 is only slightly smaller than 39x39 mm used for square medium format cameras. I recall paying about $8500 for mine, which was actually a bargain at the time (2007).

 

If you want a square camera, buy a square camera, use film, and see how it suits you. If you like it, you have the option to go digital. Daniel DeFoe (of Robinson Crusoe fame) wrote an essay in the 18th century about roasting pigs by burning down the barn. There are easier ways to roast a pig, and easier ways to create square images.

The image circle for 24x36mm is 43.27mm and 50.91mm for 36x36mm. If the camera is to use Nikon F lens there could be vignetting? Although it's only at the corners and if you crop it to either vertical or horizontal 3:2 there won't be any vignetting.

When I crop, then my most used aspect ratio is 4:5; I even use 16:9 more often than 4:3.

 

My default crop setting in Lightroom is 4:5, although I do 5:7 somewhat often also specifically because I print a lot of 5x7s. I wish there was a way I could get my D800 to show the 4:5 lines without actually shooting in 4:5...

 

I love my Hasselblad, but there's a reason why 6x7 is sometimes called the "ideal" format. It's a shame that most 6x7 cameras are so unwieldy, although the RB/RZ67 make up for this somewhat by having a rotating back.

I'm not a fan of the 1:1 format.

Yeah, the square format is not so much an advantage that you can crop it to rectangles, but more a disadvantage that you almost always NEED to crop it. I have always found the 6x7 medium format cameras nicer than the 6x6.

 

It does simplify the problems of building a rotating back.o_O

Yeah, the square format is not so much an advantage that you can crop it to rectangles, but more a disadvantage that you almost always NEED to crop it.

 

Ah, but imagine if you could select your favorite aspect ratio from among 3:2, 5:4, 4:3, 6:7, etc., in the camera—no need to crop in post. A square sensor would be the best shape to support that.

Ah, but imagine if you could select your favorite aspect ratio from among 3:2, 5:4, 4:3, 6:7, etc., in the camera—no need to crop in post. A square sensor would be the best shape to support that.

I much prefer to crop in post because you don't have to keep the center part always. You can crop just the left or right side or top or bottom size.

Joe!

I think Oscar used 2 frames because he want to avoid having to design the camera to advance the film vertically like a movie camera.

 

- I appreciate that Oskar wanted to make a larger picture area available, but it could just as easily have been made 24 by 32 mm in size. I suspect he just happened to have some cine sprocket rollers handy, and couldn't be bothered to gear them down sufficiently for the wind-on mechanism.

 

We no longer have to fit our frame into the sprocket width of cheap cine film, and it would be easy to use a frame size of, say, 27x36mm, or even 25 x 35mm. This gives us a 1.4:1 aspect ratio that fits within the same image circle as full-frame, and also fits ISO paper sizes almost perfectly.

 

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is: That no matter how ungainly, costly or awkward to compose into, any ill-conceived format size will be seen as 'perfect' and sacrosanct by some faction or other. Like, say, the ill-informed, money-driven members of the 16:9 consortium that drag up the golden ratio (nowhere near 16/9, and never meant to be used for an aspect ratio) as an excuse to force us to watch our entertainment through an unnatural letterbox.

I much prefer to crop in post because you don't have to keep the center part always. You can crop just the left or right side or top or bottom size.

That option could easily be implemented in a mirrorless camera. All in all though, at least for me, I think that's more trouble than its worth; I rather do it on a big screen at home than the small one on or in the camera.

Ah, but imagine if you could select your favorite aspect ratio from among 3:2, 5:4, 4:3, 6:7, etc., in the camera—no need to crop in post. [...] ]In fact, the best implementation of selectable aspect ratio would have the camera always record a square image using the full sensor area, and simply write an aspect ratio tag in the EXIF data.

Why then record the entire square and fill the memory card with data that's not needed? And if you think you may need it - then why go through the trouble to select the desired aspect ratio in camera since apparently you may not stick with your in-camera choice?