Low Budget Dave

I think they used 35mm just because there were a lot of lenses already available. As to the aspect ratio, remember that the image that the lenses project is almost always round. So if you increase the height, you have to decrease the width, or the corners will be dark. Almost all the major camera manufacturers went with 3:2 (or 4:3) because that is what people were used to, and people kind of liked the look.

Remember that if someone had put a square sensor behind the same lens, then you would have gotten more "height" from the image circle, but you would have given up "width".

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

While true, we ended up with lenses designed for digital. Sony, yes, they bought Minolta focus system and lens mount... millions of lenses fit that design... little profit for Sony so the changed the mount to the E system.

How green were the other makers; did the retro lenses fit the digital cameras?

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

Let’s not forget the issue of film transport. Sprocketless film could never have worked in high speed motor drive systems. For instance, the motorized Hasselblad with 120 film could only mange a winding speed of one frame per second.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Along your same line of thoughts Olympus and Panasonic decided to start a digital camera from scratch and not what other companies were doing which was to adapt 35mm bodies to digital. That way the fourth thirds and micro fourth thirds were born and I am sure you know both have been very successful....and mirrorless cameras have proven to be the trend for the future of photography.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Why not stick with a known successful formula. We can thank Oscar Barnack for the first commercial 35mm film format in 1924. It was used for years as a standard. When digital hit the market there wasn't a sensor near the size of a 35mm film frame, not even 1/2 frame 35mm film. A portion of the reason was the cost of manufacture coupled with the unknown acceptance of digital photography by the general public. As the public proved it to be a viable product market, the profits could be used to produce larger sensors. I believe the first full-frame commercially available camera was the Nikon D3 produced in 2007.

Why stay with a known format like 35mm. Lenses were readily available to cover that format. That alone saved a lot of production money in having to produce new formats, lenses to cover those formats, etc. It was less of a risk to produce a camera of a known and used format that the public was already using than to provide a new "everything" from format to camera size to lenses.
--Bob

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

$$

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

The TRICK is to make everything better but smaller with the same potential for enlarging it later. You can digitally scan an old film or print and then actually enhance later in post-processing depending on it's original condition when you scanned it.

Everything is being made more compact electronically these days and cameras are as well and so goes the sensors I'd guess....eventually...we'll see.

ELNikkor

A square sensor would make sense since round lenses would equally cover the top-to-bottom/side-to-side. Switching from horizontal to vertical would not involve twisting the camera, for those still wanting to use a 2x3 mask. It would increase the available pixels by 12mm x pixel-density of any sensor (in a 24mm x 36mm format) for anyone shooting square. Since I feel cramped by the square format, I wouldn't buy a camera like this, but if enough "square-lovers" are out there, they might want to start a movement asking for it...

thegrover Loc: Yorba Linda, CA

Many are confused about affect and effect. What is the effect of calling someone a moron?

CWGordon

It seems to me that acceptance of new was benefitted and more easily accepted if there was an easily identifiable transition, i.e. 35mm size. People have a tough time with change. As well, size of equipment and the familiarity of the size were likely a part of it all. Few were looking, at the time, to go Hasselblad size and to pay for the muck larger lenses that would be necessary. IMHO.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

35mm unperforated film was used primarily in the mass portrait business. It came in 100' (and at one point, longer) rolls, was loaded into a film magazine in a dark bag, and that magazine mounted to a professional portrait camera.

The company I worked for (Delmar) used many miles of that film every year. We processed it in cine (motion picture) film processors, and printed it on several different types of custom built package printers.

We also used 46mm unperforated long roll film, for the same sort of work. It yielded a (roughly) 6x4.5cm negative. 70mm also came in unperforated rolls. We could use it "full frame" (very large negative, about 68mm wide by 92mm long) or "half frame" (roughly a 6x4.5cm negative recorded across the film width). These larger formats were used for senior portraits, which often had a retouching option.

That aside, the REAL reason digital developed the way it did was COST vs. WAFER YIELD. Early sensors were very difficult to manufacture without flaws. Sensor makers discarded many and that was expensive. The chance of making a smaller sensor without flaws was greater than making a full frame 36x24mm sensor, so early digital cameras had small sensors.

As manufacturing processes improved, it became feasible to offer full frame sensors in quantity. They are so good, now, there is little incentive to make more than small quantities of larger (medium format) sensors. The market for medium format is very small, compared with smaller formats.

43.8×32.9mm is the size of the sensor in the Fujifilm GFX-50S. It could *probably* fit in a "full frame" body, but the existing full frame lenses would not project image circles big enough to cover it.

If you look at Nikon's 55mm-wide Z-mount, though, you might speculate that they have some ideas for a medium format Z camera... I kind of doubt it, but it looks like they kept their options open.

jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

I very much dislike the 2:3 format. I would have been much happier if DSLRs would have been developed with some other format, such as 3:4, 5:7, or 4:5 with the same sensor area as the 35mm film.

BebuLamar

In fact using the same lens and using the aspect ratio of 3:4, 5:7 or 4:5 would result in slightly larger sensor area.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Why fix some that's not broken? And full frame sensors have proven to be better than all those tiny ones that were in the beginnig! Plus you get what you pay for, if you want the best, you can get MF sensors all the way up to 4 x 5!