#ASPECT RATIO CALCULATOR FOR IMAGES 5X4 SERIES#

We will simply mention two of the Large Formats, 4×5 and 8×10. It is beyond the scope of this article to detail them all.

#ASPECT RATIO CALCULATOR FOR IMAGES 5X4 SERIES#

Like Medium Format, there are a series of increasingly large imaging areas under the rubric Large Format. Folding viewfinder and rangefinder cameras from Zeiss, Balda, Welta, Olympus, etc.

Most Twin Lens Reflex cameras, eg Rolleiflex, YashicaMat, Mamiya C330, etc.

It produces a negative which is between 2 times and three times the diagonal of 135 format. 120 film is commonly available and can be processed in many minilabs. Medium format is actually a collection of formats, all of which use unperforated 120 format roll film which is 62mm wide. More 35mm film cameras were produced than any other film type by quite a large margin, and thus it is the format most people are familiar with. 135 took over from medium format as the format of choice during the post-war period. The introduction of 135 format in the early 20th century enabled cameras to become much smaller and extremely portable. Where the formats differ widely, as in 135 vs 6×17 (to take an extreme example, 3:2 vs ~3:1), the crop factor may be better calculated by dividing the two shorter sides.Īll illustrations which follow are to scale for direct visual comparison (except for 8×10 large format). However, the resulting number is only useful if the aspect ratios of the two formats are similar. Aspect RatiosĬrop factor is below calculated by simply dividing the diagonal of the 135 format (43mm) by the diagonal of the comparison format. This discussion glosses over other important properties of a lens, such as the image circle, for the sake of simplicity. Hence a nominal crop factor aids in understanding and pre-visualisation of a shot, before a lens is chosen, for those coming from smaller or larger formats. However, due to the fact that focal length is an invariant property of a lens, a 150mm lens on a 4×5 format camera actually has a “normal” field of view because the imaging area is so much larger!

Likewise, on 135 format, a 20mm lens is considered “wide” and a 150mm lens is considered “telephoto”. For example, on 135 format, a 50mm lens is considered a “normal” angle of view or pretty close to the way the human eye sees. Part of the job of a photographer is to visualise the angle of view that a particular lens has in order to choose an appropriate focal length for a particular shot. However I understand objections to the term as conceptually, no actual crop is being applied to the larger format, rather an inverse crop (an expansion?) is being applied to the 135 format. And mathematically, it works just as well, you simply end up with numbers which are less than one as the multiplier. I have chosen to use it in this fashion because the term is a familiar one to those coming from digital imaging. To be sure, it is a strange usage of this term to apply it to imaging areas which are larger than 135 format. More generally, a crop factor can be applied to the focal length of a lens for one imaging area (or format) to provide an understanding of the angle of view that focal length will produce upon a different imaging area (or format). Crop FactorĬrop factor is a multiplier which allows one to compare a particular imaging area to the 35mm lens imaging area. This article seeks to visually explain the most common formats and relate them to the 35mm “full frame” format for people coming from a digital photography background. After an early, bewildering explosion of diversity and competition, by the late 20th century the industry had settled on a limited number of standard film types before digital photography transformed the medium. Analog photography has a deep and rich history of evolution and diversification going back 200 years.

Aspect ratio calculator for images 5x4