medium format/wide angle

photoguy99 · Feb 25, 2015

I saw this in one place, and then googled it, and it appears elsewhere. So it's a thing people say.

The thing is, roughly, that wide angle lenses don't look as wide on medium format and that this is part of the 'medium format look'.

Is there any way this isn't stupid and wrong?

Am I missing something?

(I do understand the basic geometry here, point of view gives perspective, focal length plus format gives field of view, etc)

Derrel · Feb 25, 2015

"The medium format look" is a look that has a few things that DO affect the pictures created, such as for example the couple of decades' worth of music album artwork that was shot square, and shown square, and was for 90% of it at least, shot with square-format rollfilm cameras. I'd say the Hasselblad 500C, then 500 C/M shot more album covers than any one single camera. Most medium format photos are made in the normal, then 150mm tele lengths, then in semi-wide lengths like 65mm or so. Medium format rollfilm has never had the ultra-short lens lengths that other smaller formats have easy access to. For decades, the Hasselblad Super-wide C was the widest MF wide (I want to say a 38.5mm lens)--and that came on a dedicated fixed-lens camera body! Meanwhile, Nikon had already made 18mm, then 16mm, then 13mm Uber-wides, as well as 6mm and 8mm circular fisheyes.

Square format, as well as 6x7, and also 6x8 and 6x9 fall into the realm of medium format, as does the much later, MUCH smaller 645, which was basically a WEDDING shooter's medium format system. The aspect ratio of most MF systems does not psychologically help with the perception of a "wide" field of view, since most cameras shoot to a square, or to a rather square-ish, dumpy aspect ratio.

As for wide-angle looking "less wide" on medium format: on the most popular format, which was always 6x6 or square, yes, the wide angle look is affected by a frame that is...square...the look is not wiiiiiider left to right than it is tall, but "equal"...that does not tend to emphasize wideness, but minimizes wideness. Second is a much more practical concern: MOST medium format camera systems have had only fairly modest wide-angle options, compared against the 35mm camera format with its ultra-wide lens options. I have a 6x6 Bronica, and my widest wide is the 50mm PS lens, and my normal semi-wide is the 65mm PS, while the "normal", everyday angle of view lens is the 80mm Zenzanon. It's challenging to make and design really wide-angle lenses for medium format. There really are NOT that many wide-angle lens choices for the various rollfilm camera systems. The 35mm format wins here, on all fronts, handily.

A third issue is that at normal apertures, medium format rollfilm pictures do not have as much depth of field as do smaller-format pictures. The medium format look features at its core a shallow depth of field imaging characteristic. Medium format pictures made at normal f/stops, in normal situations, with real people, and real objects, tend to have a fairly narrow band of depth of field that extends only a short distance in front of the focus point, and a short ways behind the focus point, and then the background goes into defocus very rapidly. This is NOT the way small-sensor digital devices image things; consider how an iPhone handles a shot of a 6-person bridal party standing beside a car: the background 100 feet behind the car is every bit as sharp as the flowers in the bride's hands. With a 6x6 cm camera and a 65mm lens, about the same angular view as the iPhone's 3.4mm f/2.8 lens, the depth of field band will begin to lose sharpness just a few feet behind the far side of the car. The LACK of sharp focus on far objects tends to nullify the wide-angle visual effect.

See also: the miniature effect AKA the tilt and shift lens effect; it's well-known that depth of field affects how we perceive things. When depth of field is immense, we have a feeling of tremendous depth and distance being conveyed. When depth of field is shallow, we perceive a more-constricted distance. With a wide aspect ratio image, we have a different feeling, a different perception, than with a square or square-ish aspect: see wide-screen 16:9 movies versus the old "flat" 1 to 1.3 aspect ratio of the 1900's -1950's....etc..

Ysarex · Feb 25, 2015

As Derrel noted there is going to be DOF variation due to the format size. But I think I know what you're talking about -- like this: Why Medium Format Is So Gorgeous It s About More Than Resolution

I see that a lot too and that's just confused nonsense.

Joe

photoguy99 · Feb 25, 2015

Yeah, I get the dof thing and I will even believe color improvements and perhaps some indefinable 'tonality' thing maybe.

The wide angle just seems like rubbish. Once you clear away the equivalent focal length underbrush, anyways. The format ratio is a great point Derrel. But if I understand it right you can crop a FF or whatever to the same ratio (and be mindful of the new equivalent focal length) and all the difference vanishes.

Derrel · Feb 25, 2015

It's not just "equivalent focal length". The actual size of the capture medium also affects the degree of depth of field that is possible at normal, working, real-world f/stops and shutter speeds. Until you've actually shot some medium format rollfilm with 50,65,80,and 150mm lenses, or tried to do some close-in work, you cannot possibly begin to appreciate that is is NOT just "equivalent focal length"...the angle of view might be the same, yes, but the manner in which a larger capture film or sensor impacts the secondary image characteristics is based on film size to a huge degree.

There is a reason SMALL-format cameras, with APS-C and m4/3 sensors are so popular...they allow us to photograph near/far relationships EASILY,with huge, expansive depth of field, sometimes with lenses that have obscenely wide-angle views: those same lenses do NOT exist for medium format rollfilm cameras. Cameras that capture to small film, or to small image sensors, are able to create images with deep depth of field, easily, even when using fairly long focal length lenses. With medium format cameras using 6x6 or 6x7 film picture areas, that same degree of deep depth of field is impossible to achieve using normal f/stops and at equivalent shutter speeds. The vast majority of MF rollfilm pictures have been made with normal, or semi-wide, or very short telephoto lenses, for decades now.

This entire subject of medium format image-making is one that many people simply cannot grasp fully, because they have never had to try, and FAIL, to be able to create pictures they can envision in their mind's eye. It's not just "equivalent focal length" for the field of angular view...that's not the entire picture (no pun entended). The big deal is about the depth of field PER PICTURE ANGLE, which is governed by the actual camera and its capture format size and the corresponding lenses used to create each angle of view.

Shoot things with 4x5 sheet film, then move to 120 rollfilm, then move to 35mm, then move to APS-C digital...the actual photographic process, the actual shooting and the photos made is very different in each of these cases. With medium format rollfilm (6x6 to 6x9) there are very few lens choices, and at the longer end of the focal length ranges, the depth of field is exceedingly shallow. The deep DOF that small-format sensor cameras bring with them is one of the key features/advantages that many people are exploiting with today's m4/3 digital cameras, and also to an extent with today's APS-C sized cameras.

There simply do not exist many extreme wide-angle lenses for medium format rollfilm, and today's digital MF is not really that much larger than FF digital (roughly 44x33mm sensors, apprx.) is at 36x24mm. Medium format rollfilm cameras are few in number, and they are not "equivalent" to today's small-sensor digital cameras in the way pictures can be made. I'm trying to make this not sound like I am attacking, but this subject is one that needs to be experienced first-hand, because the idea of "equivalent focal length" is hugely misunderstood in the internet age. The differences are real, but there's this world wide web tendency to just go to some web calculator, and type in a lens length and then click, and get an "equivalent" that accounts ONLY for numerical values, but omits the actual real-world picture taking factors. It's a lot like saying that a wheat harvesting combine is the same as a lawnmower because they both can cut down grassy stalks...a battleship and a shrimp trawler are both boats...but they cannot do the same things. A pea-shooter and a rifle both shoot a projectile out of a tube or barrel. Ergo, everything is equal. No. No it's not.

The article Ysarex linked to above is a good example of somebody who lacks the ability to articulate something simple: MOST MF film images have been shot with normal length lenses...his "all stretched out" comment is his way of grasping at what he cannot articulate, which is that medium format rollfilm cameras have very few wide-angle lens options, and therefore he has seen a lot of MF images that were shot with 80mm lenses.

photoguy99 · Feb 25, 2015

I think you're just clarifying Derrel but I do want to be clear too.

I do grasp the dof issues. It's specifically the 'wide doesn't look as wide on MF' which vanishes once you sort out crops and equivalent focal lengths.

Ysarex · Feb 25, 2015

photoguy99 said:
I think you're just clarifying Derrel but I do want to be clear too.

I do grasp the dof issues. It's specifically the 'wide doesn't look as wide on MF' which vanishes once you sort out crops and equivalent focal lengths.

Right. I used to shoot a 47mm Super Angulon on a 6x9 camera. It was very much like shooting a 24mm on a 35. Most people who shot MF as Derrel notes didn't shoot as wide. People confuse practice and theory.

It's a long-standing problem and one that I gave up on years ago. Photography has a collection of "old wives tales" firmly in place that are all spuriously attributed to various phenomena and especially to lens focal length and it's impossible to kill and bury them -- zombie photo fallacies -- (make a fun thread).

I've had experiences on some of the campuses where I taught; I'd overhear another faculty for example handing out misinformation in class and I'd later pull him aside and nicely point out the error even with appropriate references only to here the same thing again months later from the same guy. I could write out the math for him and it wouldn't do any good -- can't kill a zombie.

For example lens focal length and perspective which is at the root of this issue: A 300mm lens compresses perspective -- right? And oh dear Lord DOF -- 1/3 in front and 2/3 in the back. People confuse practice and theory. They turn their practice experience into theory. If you shot a 300mm Sironar on an 8x10, you wouldn't get that nonsense idea that a 300mm compresses perspective.

When I was full-time faculty I used to get regular shipments of textbooks (Once you're on the publisher's list they just keep coming.) I used to play a game with my students. Every time a new book arrived I'd open it in the lab and hold it over the waste basket. Then we'd play three strikes. I'd start in the index and look up perspective: strike one! More than 1/2 the books went in the bin only to be fished out later by my students -- can't kill a zombie.

Joe

Derrel · Feb 25, 2015

photoguy99 said:
I think you're just clarifying Derrel but I do want to be clear too.

I do grasp the dof issues. It's specifically the 'wide doesn't look as wide on MF' which vanishes once you sort out crops and equivalent focal lengths.

And also, telephoto portraiture shot on medium format rollfilm looks VERY blurry in the backgrounds of images shot with 150mm or 250mm telephotos at normal f/stops, like f/5.6. I think though that from a practical, real-world way of looking at things, the idea that "wide doesn't look as wide on medium format" is that, for the most part, there are no really ultra-wide-angle lenses available for medium format photographers. When I was in my 20's in the mid-1980's era, a 20mm lens on 35mm film was considered very wide, and a 17mm was commonly called an ultra-wide, and of the 10 photographers I knew at that time only one owned a 17mm lens. Wide-angle on medium format does not look so wide because...there are almost no really wide-angle medium format lenses in the real world...and the lens development efforts in ultra-wide angle lenses have been focused mostly on the small format cameras since the 1980's.