35mm format a misnomer in digital cameras

Unlike the 35mm film format today's digital cameras cannot legitimately claim to be a 35mm format. Call it by any other name or format, but not 35mm format because there is none in digital cameras.
35mm format belongs to the days of film cameras because most film cameras use 35mm films that come in cartridges. This in turn was borrowed from cinefilm ,during the early Leica years which had a film width from edge to edge of exactly 35mm-hence 35mm format. If you have a roll of 135 negatives take out a ruler and measure the film width from edge to edge and it is 35mm, no more, no less. On this roll of 35mm wide film film cameras could take up to 36 pictures/images measuring 24mm x 36mm. Because the sprockets on the edges take up some space the remaining space was limited to 24mm.
Today's digital cameras have no such standard to speak of. Their F/F sensor is only 24mm vs the film's 35mm when comparing the yardstick used as a standard, their 36mm vs the film's 18mm or 24mm or 32mm or in most cases 36mm. Perhaps that is why Leica never called their S2 a MF camera. It is simply called an S format. There is no uniform sizes in digital sensors, even those with so called APS-C sensors do not all measure exactly the same. Even a few F/F do not measure exactly 24mm x 36mm. Perhaps the only real standardized sensor size may be the Four Thirds.

 

Oh, is that so? Please look at the big picture-see www.canon.com/news for "News /Press Releases 2009". Look under May 15, 2009 ...Canon EOS 5D Mark II awarded top honors in Japan's premier photo industry awards. It says very clearly it is a 35mm full frame format. This is from Canon headquarters.
What does the public think? Would they be convinced that today's dslrs are not 35mm cameras or based on 35mm format?

 

Shame on both Canon and Nikon, still clutching to, and falsely claiming that their f/f sensors are based on, the 35mm film format for their 24 x 36 sensors dslrs. They call it their 35mm CMOS. There is nothing 35mm about it. That belongs to 135 film/slides that comes in 35mm width with sprockets and in a length suitable for either 24 or 36 or even 72 pictures. That clever corporate and PR dropping of names, 35mm format, is one smart move.

 

Well, I am confused. Now, which is which? One says no manufacturers called their sensors a 35mm sensor, only DX, FX or FF sensors. Others seem to agree. Now, we hear that 24 x 36 is 35mm format in dslr? Or is it a 35mm sensor?
A better format is to call it by its diagonal in mm sensor, like a 43.3mm sensor. At least this 43.3mm sensor format is more precise than DX, FX, and FF sensors, don't you agree? But can you imagine manufacturers opting to use this term? Their 'bridge' to their legacy 35mm lenses will simply collapse, hightlighting to the photographic world that true 24x36 size sensor digital cameras are not the peoples choice, numbering a handful of models instead of thousands as it should be. A common standard has now become extremely uncommon.

 

Well, this is something new. It would yurn photography on its head if the above is true.
First let me explain a little about the lens to sensor or film distance. For the best of lens design the mirror box of a dslr or slr and the auto-diaphragm reduce the lens designer's flexibilty for the perfect lens. Second, there is no truth that a longer lens to sensor distance makes better bokeh or a shallower depth of field. The Leica M camera has a slim lens to film distance of only 27.8mm compared with the Nikon's huge 46.5mm. Yet a 90mm lens set at f2.8 will have identical depth of field and bokeh in both cameras, that is only a D3, when filling the frame with a subject of the same size. In fact the M camera will beat even the Nikon D3, albeit marginally, but will slaughter all the other Nikon dslrs of less than F/F. My Zeiss Ikon is only 28mm thick and its lens to film distance is even smaller. But this camera has a diagonal image of 128mm with its standard lens close to 128mm although it spots a lens of only 105mm. It will make the Nikon's bokeh and depth of field look at a P&S. Confused? No, it is clever lens design unencumbered by the mirror box and auto-diaphragm.
The Zeiss and especially the Leica lenses are the unchallenged kings of bokeh. Because of very high lens quality these top class lenses are used at their maximum aperture, which are very useable aperture unlike almost all other lenses whose maximum apertures are a joke, good for nothing except for focusing. The design and quality of the diaphgragm or aperture blades aslo play a part.

 

Maybe a little more information about standard formats in cameras can come in handy. The image formed by a lens is round and its diameter is related to the size of the recording medium, be it film or sensor thence storage. For some unexplained reasons the recording medium is always cropped, never round. Do we see things in a circle or is it always a fixed two-dimensional height and width ratio of 2 to 3 as in 24 x 36? Some big boys say the 2:3 ratio is a sheer waste of useful image, so they have a square picture. Be it 2:3, square or what have you, they are are cropped from the original circular image.
So far so good, now what happens to the discarded part of the circular image that has gone into the camera body? Of course it gets bounced around. That is the reason why the insides of a camera body are matt black, no glass to accentuate bouncing light to create flare. Flare creates unsharpness. A cropped image of 36x36 instead of 24x36 will theoritically produce crisper pictures, the former will have less light to bounce around than the latter. Both these 2 sizes can be used on the same body with the same lens. Now, tell me what is the true diagonal of this format? Surely, both cannot be right because both will take the same lens and produce the same picture except one is less cropped than the other. The true diagonal is 50.9mm. Does this ring a bell? Is it a standard lens for your 35mm film camera? Some say it is 43.3mm diagonal but 43.3mm is not a standard lens for a 35mm film camera. Confused? Where does 35mm come in?
35mm is a standard used for a film with a height from edge to edge of 35mm, which is moved along the camera body for each exposure. There is no mention of the length of the film, only the 35mm height, for a good reason. The length can be anything, and cameras have been made to take 24 exposures, 36 exposures, 72 exposures, and 250 exposures or pictures, so there is no other specifications on length other than the 35mm height.
Like a standard rail gauge for trains to run on, the 35mm film gauge provides space for the "rails" called sprockets, leaving enough room left for a 24mm image. Now why is the length 36mm? Actually, there is no reason why it should be only 36mm. It can be 18mm and many cameras have used this.
Irrespective of what image size on the film is, the standard gauge is 35mm that makes things move along.
We now move on to dslrs, which started with almost all a mumbo jumbo of standards, and 35mm it certainly is not. But their claim to 35mm started on the day dslr was born. But there is no standard gauge like you have on rail tracks and on 135 film. So keen are they to stay within the 35mm standard family they then came up with crop factors this, crop factors that. Crop factors have always existed between 35mm, medium format, large format film cameras but nobody ever abuse its use. They have done such a good job that the public now thinks all dslr are 35mm digital cameras with that funny crop factors.

 

Did Leica actually call their new M9 a 35mm sensor? Or is it a 24 x 36mm ccd sensor, as their press release seems to say? If Leica claims it is a 35mm sensor then yes brickbats to them. If not, what then?