miss 6x6 a lot

[Rollei6008i]

A 1949 Rolleiflex TLR is one of the first cameras I learned photography with, on loan from my grandfather in 1968 or so. Yikes, that's 46 years ago!!! (Before that were a run of Kodak roll-film, Instamatics, a Minolta 16-Ps, and an Argus C3...)

Yes, there are fewer film types available, but still more than enough for my needs. I almost always shoot either Ilford XP2 Super or Fuji ACROS 100 these days, only occasionally color.

I think Nikon is still servicing the Coolscan 9000ED. Have you contacted them?

G

Thank you very much indeed . Yes, Nikon still provide serving on it. But the quality of 9000ED became worse & worse , I think that it cannot be repaired. It also very time comsuming for scanning. Good Lab also determine a good quality of images but it becomes less & less .

 

[Godfrey]

Thank you very much indeed . Yes, Nikon still provide serving on it. But the quality of 9000ED became worse & worse , I think that it cannot be repaired. It also very time comsuming for scanning. Good Lab also determine a good quality of images but it becomes less & less .

Well, I wouldn't toss it for dead without getting an estimate. Super Coolscan 9000ED scanners are selling used for $2500-5000 these days. If it can be repaired for even $1000-1500, you can turn it around by selling it for twice to three times that.

I don't mind the speed because I don't shoot all that much 6x6, comparatively speaking. When I do, I go into a scanfest moment and blast a whole bunch through. Once I have good raw scan files out of VueScan, I'm done ... the rest of the work is all in Lightroom.

G

 

[EH21]

I really like the square format as well. I'd love to see a larger square sensor too. I used the p20 for a long while on a 6008AF and loved it but it was hard to go very wide with the crop factor. The AFi-ii 12 makes a 60mp image when set to 1::1 which isn't too shabby. I do lust after a full frame square sensor though.

 

[fotografz]

Using digital back for more than one year . Unluckily, my favourite 6x6 format seems apart from me longer and longer .

Why no 6x6 sensor ? No market ? 6x6 composition not good ? But the square format camera producer said that it is a perfect format during film age.

BTW, 6x6 format , really miss you a lot.

A woman friend of mine once quipped, "There are no ugly women, just lazy ones".

Likewise, those that love the 6X6 square, and lament it's loss are just lazy.

I do not kid myself that I abandoned my much loved 6X6 (and other MF analog film cameras) for any other reason then I was, am, and remain lazy, pure and simple.

The whining about no 6X6 sensor has been going on for a decade now … I predict that even if you live to be 110, you will die of old age "whining & pining" for one.

Digital has contaminated photography by appealing to the slothfulness in us. Read any commentary on digital advancements, and the emphasis is primarily about making it easier, faster, more prolific … "Oh my, the new ZXD-MKIII won't make a milkshake for me. It's a piece of shyt, I wouldn't caught dead with."

Digital is like a promiscuous escort … pay the money and anyone can have it's delights. Pay more, get more. Not a lot more, just enough to make you pay even more to get a little more. Pretty soon you'll have to buy the damned thing an apartment in the city.

We have a million reasons we conjure up to mask our laziness.

"Film is so expensive". How much do we think a 6X6 sensor back would cost if they made one? $30K to $35K would buy a lot of film and processing.

"Film is hard to get." More laziness. B&H lists 60 different 120 offerings. Hell, they even offer 4 different listings for 220.

"Film processing is disappearing." Actually, the hack labs are disappearing. There are plenty of expert labs doing film, and if you aren't too lazy, you can do your own B&W.

Johnny is right, an Epson flatbed scanner can do MF film quite nicely, for the price of a P&S camera. If you want more, faster, better, get a Imacon 949 … I know of mint one to be had for $10K … the price of a "dated" crop frame digital back for a 6X6 camera.

Personally, in retrospect, my slothfulness and lazy ways has cost me a King's ransom. I was forced to MF digital to compete commercially, but when I ended that trek I kept going with digital by throwing huge wads of money into a black hole. Being lazy is an expensive pursuit.

Unfortunately laziness is a terminal disease, and I'm now too old and set in my ways to venture back to film. For those that haven't yet caught the MF digital virus, you still have a chance.

- Marc

 

[Rollei6008i]

A woman friend of mine once quipped, "There are no ugly women, just lazy ones".

Likewise, those that love the 6X6 square, and lament it's loss are just lazy.

I do not kid myself that I abandoned my much loved 6X6 (and other MF analog film cameras) for any other reason then I was, am, and remain lazy, pure and simple.

The whining about no 6X6 sensor has been going on for a decade now … I predict that even if you live to be 110, you will die of old age "whining & pining" for one.

Digital has contaminated photography by appealing to the slothfulness in us. Read any commentary on digital advancements, and the emphasis is primarily about making it easier, faster, more prolific … "Oh my, the new ZXD-MKIII won't make a milkshake for me. It's a piece of shyt, I wouldn't caught dead with."

Digital is like a promiscuous escort … pay the money and anyone can have it's delights. Pay more, get more. Not a lot more, just enough to make you pay even more to get a little more. Pretty soon you'll have to buy the damned thing an apartment in the city.

We have a million reasons we conjure up to mask our laziness.

"Film is so expensive". How much do we think a 6X6 sensor back would cost if they made one? $30K to $35K would buy a lot of film and processing.

"Film is hard to get." More laziness. B&H lists 60 different 120 offerings. Hell, they even offer 4 different listings for 220.

"Film processing is disappearing." Actually, the hack labs are disappearing. There are plenty of expert labs doing film, and if you aren't too lazy, you can do your own B&W.

Johnny is right, an Epson flatbed scanner can do MF film quite nicely, for the price of a P&S camera. If you want more, faster, better, get a Imacon 949 … I know of mint one to be had for $10K … the price of a "dated" crop frame digital back for a 6X6 camera.

Personally, in retrospect, my slothfulness and lazy ways has cost me a King's ransom. I was forced to MF digital to compete commercially, but when I ended that trek I kept going with digital by throwing huge wads of money into a black hole. Being lazy is an expensive pursuit.

Unfortunately laziness is a terminal disease, and I'm now too old and set in my ways to venture back to film. For those that haven't yet caught the MF digital virus, you still have a chance.

- Marc

You may be right but sure it is not my point of turning into DB .

After I watched the resulting images taken by DB , my heart already addicted to it. I am using much more time after using DB since I can manipulate the resulting image by me all the way.
During the film age, I only can control the things before processing the film. My images may be ruined by bad film processing & bad printing ( actually always) , after I turned to take slide film , I found my shooting quite good.
Besides, some of my friends are reluncted to digital photos but later found that they are not familiar to Raw file processing ( PC operation) . They always have excuses that the images are too digital ; But film just give me the film feeling but not the image quality .
Actually, I found that the laziness of the DB maker is the most lethal point of digital phootography, a decades' DB image quality is almost the same as nowadays , the difference just the back display & software .

 

[danlindberg]

I bought a Hasselblad 500 CM in the early eighties, in my early teens, and the square format shaped my photographic vision. Today I still compose square among with 4:3 and 2:1. Square never left as an option and I do not have a problem producing square with my back(s).

If I see a square image that needs to be shot in one exposure, after cropping with the Credo 60, it still leaves me with a native file of 57x57cm @300dpi in 16bit Tiff. Perfect for a straight print on a 24" with a little white border and then add a good size passpartout and frame makes it a 80x80cm piece of art on the wall. This without interpolating at all. Not bad in my book.

If the scene allows for a flatstich, then the file will hold up for just about any kind of output. Effortless with my Alpa Max, a couple of seconds between exposures and also easy and quick post processing to merge to square.

Sure, 56x56 sensor would be nice, but I feel I can produce just about anything I want to produce with the stuff I already have. No probs.

 

[Rollei6008i]

I bought a Hasselblad 500 CM in the early eighties, in my early teens, and the square format shaped my photographic vision. Today I still compose square among with 4:3 and 2:1. Square never left as an option and I do not have a problem producing square with my back(s).

If I see a square image that needs to be shot in one exposure, after cropping with the Credo 60, it still leaves me with a native file of 57x57cm @300dpi in 16bit Tiff. Perfect for a straight print on a 24" with a little white border and then add a good size passpartout and frame makes it a 80x80cm piece of art on the wall. This without interpolating at all. Not bad in my book.

If the scene allows for a flatstich, then the file will hold up for just about any kind of output. Effortless with my Alpa Max, a couple of seconds between exposures and also easy and quick post processing to merge to square.

Sure, 56x56 sensor would be nice, but I feel I can produce just about anything I want to produce with the stuff I already have. No probs.

:clap::clap::clap:

 

[fotografz]

You may be right but sure it is not my point of turning into DB .

After I watched the resulting images taken by DB , my heart already addicted to it. I am using much more time after using DB since I can manipulate the resulting image by me all the way.
During the film age, I only can control the things before processing the film. My images may be ruined by bad film processing & bad printing ( actually always) , after I turned to take slide film , I found my shooting quite good.
Besides, some of my friends are reluncted to digital photos but later found that they are not familiar to Raw file processing ( PC operation) . They always have excuses that the images are too digital ; But film just give me the film feeling but not the image quality .
Actually, I found that the laziness of the DB maker is the most lethal point of digital phootography, a decades' DB image quality is almost the same as nowadays , the difference just the back display & software .

This makes no sense to me. Perhaps a language problem?

Anything you can do to a digital image can be done to a scanned film image after processing.

Bad film processing and printing sounds like a bad film and printing lab. Change labs.

I had two rolls of film screwed up by labs in 25+ years of shooting MF film (24 images). I had a hard drive catostrophically fail before I could back it up that same day, and it took 2,500 digital image to their grave … not recoverable according to a pro recovery service. Last year, I had a 32 gig CF card full of Hasselblad H4D/60 travel images go belly up … Hasselblad nor Sandisk could recover them, and blamed each other for the loss. Loss can happen with any media.

Film feeling and Image Quality are different? I won't deny that you can pixel peep digital on a screen and compared to 200% views of scanned 6X6 film, it'll look better, but is that why we shoot photos … to pixel peep at 200%? When you print a film image and view it from normal viewing distances what you have is the look of film rather than the look of digital. Print the film neg with analog on silver-print and you have something quite unique compared to the billion digital images that rarely get printed.

I've been to a thousand galleries in my long photographic trek, I've yet to see a digital print that comes close to Ansel Adams' prints … and I don't even like his work all that much! The Anne Leibovitz show at the International Center for Photography in NYC featured 8' tall analog prints from her RZ film days, and no one was pressing their nose to the corners to evaluate the IQ. That is a anal compulsive disorder unique to digital. I have a dozen master silver prints on my walls, and they all look better than any digital based print I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.

I'm not advocating film over digital, I'm 100% digital myself and will never go back. However, I admire those who have the moxie and will to work with film, and master it. It is quite an accomplishment with its own set of unique rewards. Not to mention it is a hell of a lot less expensive.

Had I somehow stuck with film, I estimate I'd have close to $300,000 more in the bank, and could pay cash for a place on the beach … then leisurely shoot some nice images with my V camera and a couple of rolls of Tri-X pro @ 320, and few portraits with Portra 160 to earn enough for a fresh Lobster dinner and a pitcher of beer at the local crab shack.

- Marc

 

[Rollei6008i]

This makes no sense to me. Perhaps a language problem?

Anything you can do to a digital image can be done to a scanned film image after processing.

Bad film processing and printing sounds like a bad film and printing lab. Change labs.

I had two rolls of film screwed up by labs in 25+ years of shooting MF film (24 images). I had a hard drive catostrophically fail before I could back it up that same day, and it took 2,500 digital image to their grave … not recoverable according to a pro recovery service. Last year, I had a 32 gig CF card full of Hasselblad H4D/60 travel images go belly up … Hasselblad nor Sandisk could recover them, and blamed each other for the loss. Loss can happen with any media.

Film feeling and Image Quality are different? I won't deny that you can pixel peep digital on a screen and compared to 200% views of scanned 6X6 film, it'll look better, but is that why we shoot photos … to pixel peep at 200%? When you print a film image and view it from normal viewing distances what you have is the look of film rather than the look of digital. Print the film neg with analog on silver-print and you have something quite unique compared to the billion digital images that rarely get printed.

I've been to a thousand galleries in my long photographic trek, I've yet to see a digital print that comes close to Ansel Adams' prints … and I don't even like his work all that much! The Anne Leibovitz show at the International Center for Photography in NYC featured 8' tall analog prints from her RZ film days, and no one was pressing their nose to the corners to evaluate the IQ. That is a anal compulsive disorder unique to digital. I have a dozen master silver prints on my walls, and they all look better than any digital based print I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.

I'm not advocating film over digital, I'm 100% digital myself and will never go back. However, I admire those who have the moxie and will to work with film, and master it. It is quite an accomplishment with its own set of unique rewards. Not to mention it is a hell of a lot less expensive.

Had I somehow stuck with film, I estimate I'd have close to $300,000 more in the bank, and could pay cash for a place on the beach … then leisurely shoot some nice images with my V camera and a couple of rolls of Tri-X pro @ 320, and few portraits with Portra 160 to earn enough for a fresh Lobster dinner and a pitcher of beer at the local crab shack.

- Marc

I admired that good lab can be found at your living place.:thumbs:

 

[PSon]

Despite our differences in how to capture square format, many of us who read or commented on this subject are linked to square format whether it has to do with the composition or the experience of shooting a square format camera (waist level finder, different perspective due to wlf). Since there is no current full frame square format digital sensor, many of us have found our own ways to deal with it:

1) Shoot crop factor square format digital sensors. The main issue here is we are loosing out on the wide angle lens perspective. A focal length reducer/speed booster would be nice and simple solution here but not an option. To solve this problem, my solution is to put the crop factor digital sensor on a technical camera where I can use very wide angle lens. Technical camera and lens systems have not only partially solved the problem but actually enhances these crop digital backs to another level that a full frame digital sensor on the traditional medium format film camera and lens cannot do. For example, the Canon 17mm TS-E on a lowly Hasselblad CFV-16 digital back can give you tilt and shift and a wider view compare to the traditional film camera.

2) Shoot full frame 645 digital sensor and stitch them. Again, a technical camera is useful here but not necessary.

3) Shoot film. I actually feel that shooting a film magazine on the traditional 6X6 film camera can give you a full experience that you are missing. Whenever, I put a digital back on these cameras, the camera system is no longer balance well in my hand. The film back is compact and light weight which balance the camera very well. Furthermore, the point of using a digital back to stitch for square composition is working backward if you are new to square format. People like Dan who used square format film camera before has the experience to see square in order to shoot and stitch digitally. Thus, for a new photographer or student, it is better to shoot film camera in order to see square format besides learning the art of film itself.

 

[Godfrey]

...
Likewise, those that love the 6X6 square, and lament it's loss are just lazy.
...
Unfortunately laziness is a terminal disease, and I'm now too old and set in my ways to venture back to film. For those that haven't yet caught the MF digital virus, you still have a chance.

Um, hmm.

I love the 6x6 square and wish there was a digital medium format camera that included it. However, I don't think it's "lost" as there's plenty of film and processing to be had.

I don't shoot 6x6 too often not because of laziness but because of time. Time is the biggest issue for me when it comes to any kind of film work—including Polaroid. It takes time to shoot, time to process, time to print (which also requires facilities I don't have). Moving to scanning ... that takes time too, but less, and then the image processing part goes quickly.

Time is the most precious resource we have. There's value in the fast turnaround with digital capture that allows us to learn, to explore, to expand our vision. And physically there's really only just so much time to be had—for most of us our careers the demand most of our day to day time along with the necessities of living, and do other things that have some priority that needs to be serviced as well. Back when film was all of photography, I had much less time to do and learn photography ...

And then the technical issues—the Hasselblad SWC's wonderful Biogon 38mm lens is not at its best with a digital sensor due to the way it sits so close to the imaging plane. It can be done with the smaller format backs, but the FoV and imaging feel is different from how it images with film and, to my eye, degraded.

So I find it rather difficult to say that all of digital is there because of laziness, or 6x6 is diminishing because of laziness. I love doing 6x6 even with film. I simply don't have the time to do much of it and ramp my learning curve, my vision, to where I want it to be. It's the same reason I did more 35mm and submini when film was the only choice. A digital 6x6 camera would let me achieve more by giving me a much more efficient and productive process to learn with.

G
... Have you hugged your SWC lately? ...

 

[ondebanks]

Since there is no current full frame square format digital sensor, many of us have found our own ways to deal with it:

1) Shoot crop factor square format digital sensors. The main issue here is we are loosing out on the wide angle lens perspective.

That's what I do - square format DB -, but to win on the wide angle issue I use a 645 camera rather than a 6x6 camera. It might be heresy to advocate this, since so many of you clearly adore your square Hasselblads, SWCs, and Rolleis, but the best platform for shooting square-digital is a rectangular 645 SLR. Use a Contax or Hasselblad-H if you want that top-down WLF view. Use a Mamiya if you want the best value and widest lens range.

A few posts up, Marc lamented "throwing huge wads of money into a black hole" and mentioned the eye-watering sum of $300k spent in pursuit of his commercial MF digital setups.

So it bears repeating that square format DBs are not only great for satisfying our square format cravings; they are also the cheapest entry into self-contained, modular MFD systems. Back, body and lens for $2.5k (all used, naturally) is doable nowadays.

Ray

 

[Slixtiesix]

6x6 is also my format of choice using Rollei and Hasselblad and I really would appreciate a DB in 55x55mm. I do not think that resolution has to be overly high. Something around 36 MP would be fully sufficient in my view. Everything above that would be too demanding on the most common lenses anyway and I think only the very best optics like 100/3,5, 120/4, 180/4 or the Superachromats would satisfy the needs of a sensor with more resolution than that. The price should be rather low, say around 3500 USD, to aim at high volumes since millions of Hasselblad users are eagerly waiting for this I think.

Anyway, I´m very confident that we will see a back like this before the decade ends. I doubt that Hasselblad will make it, but I´m sure some smart Chinese can do!

 

[jotloob]

. . . . . . millions of Hasselblad users are eagerly waiting for this I think.

Anyway, I´m very confident that we will see a back like this before the decade ends. I doubt that Hasselblad will make it, but I´m sure some smart Chinese can do!

An interesting idea , but I do not believe in dreams .. dreams .. dreams .
I might be wrong though .

 

[fotografz]

An interesting idea , but I do not believe in dreams .. dreams .. dreams .
I might be wrong though .

My money would be on "It'll never, ever, ever, ever happen".

But it's nice to perpetuate the endless dream of riding to a photo shoot on my blue Unicorn, with a V camera and 40 meg 56X56 square sensor back, then shooting a herd pigs of flying over a rainbow made of Skittles (hey, it could happen!).

Just kidding

What is more likely to happen (if anything), is that Sony will make a MFD mirror-less camera that's small (like how the A7R is small compared to other FF 35mm cameras), and it'll take every MF lens ever made with an aperture ring. It won't be square, of that I am certain. I seriously doubt that even that would be under $6K.

- Marc