BebuLamar

But did they talked about crop factor back then? Nope! It's only when camera manufacturer started to make DSLR with sensor smaller than the 24x36mm but used lenses designed for the 24x36mm format then they talked about the crop factor.

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Why focus only on view camera users ? Typically if you acquired a Bronica, Blad, etc it came with a 75 or 80 normal. From that you knew approximately what FoV to expect from 40, 50, 150 etc. Likewise for the next size up, popular 6x9 “press and wedding” cameras that came with a 90 or 100 normal. This goes all the way back to the pioneering Leica and Contax 35s. No crop factor was discussed when acquiring one for comparing FLs to your Rollei or Graphic or whatever you were using. The new 35s had normal 50s plus 28, 35, 90, and 135 commonly provided as wides and teles ... wide and wider, long and longer, no math, no confusion.

BebuLamar

Back in the film days only view camera users actually deal with the crop factor but they didn't say it. They used the same lenses for different format. Other formats have their own lens line. Oh well you can use A16 back or A12 back on the Hasselblad so you have 2 formats for the same lens line.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

The point is that with advent of the digital age most photographers were shooting 35mm film. The early DSLR’s were replacing 35mm film cameras so they were equating these “cropped” cameras to the 35mm equivalent.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Yes, they did.

BebuLamar

Reference any article or book that talked about crop factor before digital.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Yes, we did talk about "crop factor" back in the days of film... Or even way back in the days of glass plate and daguerreotypes.

We just didn't call it "crop factor". There were many other terms, but we essentially needed to make the same sort of calculations when choosing lenses. There were charts showing lens equivalents across many of the more common image formats. Some of those can still be found posted on the Internet, if you do a search.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, glass plates were common and came in full size, half-plate, quarter plate and other formats.

Film for still photography was first offered as individual sheets. It was early cinema that made use of roll film and fairly quickly standardized on a 70mm width.

Roll film at first was what we now call "medium format", 70mm wide and in different lengths. There were a bunch of different designations that all used that film width, but with it spooled onto different types of spindles. Kodak was notorious for doing that in the early to mid 20th century, patenting and monopolizing different "formats" used in their cameras, all of which used the same basic film. They did that to force buyers to have to buy their film and even have it developed by Kodak. They also were able to make money licensing the use of their patented formats to other manufacturers who wanted in on the marketplace.

Oscar Barnack was one of the earliest proponents of 35mm roll film in cartridges, which at first was simply cinema film split in half lengthwise, then cut to lengths and loaded into cartridges. As early as 1913 he was inventing what would eventually become the Leica rangefinder camera system. Through WWII medium format roll film and larger format sheet films were dominant... but after WWII 35mm roll film, often called "miniature" at the time by many manufacturers, began rapidly gaining popularity. The post-war reconstruction efforts in both Japan and Germany helped foster the development of many brands of 35mm cameras, as well as encouraging international marketing of those cameras.

But even 35mm cameras didn't universally use the 24x36mm image format. Once film quality improved and enlarging more common, there were a lot of "half frame" (some preferred to call them "single frame") cameras that typically made 18x24mm images and got twice as many shots on a roll. There were even some cameras designed to shoot both formats. At first, half frame cameras were able to be especially compact. But manufacturers found ways to reduce the size of cameras using "full frame" format too, since the film cartridge was exactly the same size in both full and half frame cameras.

There were some other, less common format variations on 35mm wide roll film. One short-lived variant made 30x36mm images, but required film stock without the "sprocket holes" punched along the edges and used to advance the film, as was common with most 35mm films. I don't know that this format ever got a formal or informal name the way some other common formats did,

There also were a few cameras that produced panoramic images on 35mm film stock.

Early on the 35mm film cartridge wasn't standardized. But after WWII it became more universal. There also was a fairly rapid increase in the types of film being offered.... black & white was no longer the only choice. It increasingly came in a variety of sensitivities, B&W plus color negative emulsions and transparency (slide) films.

After WWII medium format films fairly quickly became standardized in shorter, paper-backed "120" and longer, paperless "220" rolls, largely marking the end of Kodak's shenanigans. MF film also saw a wide variety of image formats on those rolls... the most common being 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, 6x8cm and 6x9cm. There were others, including some panoramic.

Large format sheet film was available in a wide variety of sizes too: Pre-WWII it often emulated the glass plate sizes. After WWII it became more common and standardized to see inch and cm sizes. In N. America it was mostly inch sizes: 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 sheets being the most common, though there were both smaller and larger as well.

There were even ultra small and concealable "spy" cameras that used smaller film formats.... 17mm was a common size, which is essentially 35mm film split in half lengthwise. (Note: this also is likely where 16mm movie film came from.... which in turn got split lengthwise again to make 8mm movie film).

All these different film image formats required different lens focal lengths too. Someone like me - using 35mm roll film SLRs, two different image format MF film cameras, and a large format 4x5 sheet film camera - had to do "crop factor" calculations when choosing lenses for each system... just like we do today with the various digital image formats. On one camera a 50mm lens is a "normal" or standard, while on others it's a super wide angle. Or, on others still the same 50mm serves as a short telephoto. In most cases even though the focal length is the same, the lens had to have a different design to be able to make a large enough image circle to cover the entire image, as well as in many cameras have the correct back focus distance to a fixed film plane.

Here's a web page that does a pretty good job illustrating many of the most popular film image formats, their "crop factors" and lens equivalencies between various formats: https://www.anatomyfilms.com/medium-format-lens-vs-35mm-lens/

One nice thing about digital is that there's a lot more interchangeability. I have a set of lenses that are mostly usable on both "APS-C" and "full frame" digital cameras. That wasn't the case with many film cameras. With a few exceptions, you needed a different set of lenses for each format.

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Much a ado about nothing ... again.

Still no actual reference, hints of arcane cine prehistory notwithstanding.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Oh good grief, they used to put crop lunes in the viewfinder and one of the selling points was in camera cropping and the 'magnification factor' gained by using NIKKOR film lenses on an Advanced PhotoSystem PRONEA SLR.

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IIRC the crop lines in the finder were for panorama cropped print orders. APS film recorded the user’s cropping instructions for individual frames and then informed the APS compatible print machines. IOW nothing related to any “crop factor”. No numbers, just pictures.

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

thank you fellow UHH'ers i had been under the impression that the e-mount camera had a smaller sensor. i really like the goodies on the hi-end e-mount cameras.if i am ever able to get back into pre -2016 activity moving up with an adaptor would be worth it.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Was the sky blue before the English language?

What is a magnification factor if not a crop factor?

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

Right!

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Recent scholarly research indicates it was not. Apparently you haven’t kept up. I’d expect you may be rather intrigued when you look into it.

The sky was NOT blue, and yet it was no different than the sky today.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

If you try your best and fail, next time buy a full-frame camera.