Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/09/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Double frame digital! Full frame is double frame. Or what it was called at first.. And double frame is a very Leica like idea. An idea Barnack considered critical to his concept. Big pictures small negatives. But to get those big pix from a small neg he'd need to use more of the film. More sprockets. stretch it sideways. Barnack innovation was he turned the camera sideways. And got more on the frame of 35mm movie film than was normally done at least in movies and on most of the 35mm cameras which had already come out. Actually quite a few of the 35mm cameras which had come out had an option between single and double, half and full frame. And the trick for getting any kind of quality at all was to just stick with the mask taken out and going double frame with everything. Though these cameras were bulky and odd and cumbersome. The opposite of the well machined elegance that the Leica' s became. In effect it was "Big pictures small camera". A small camera you can make big pictures from and not embarrass yourself. Would 35mm film use have taken over photography if it had been half frame then called single frame? I'd guess not. But it was well known the idea of not just using the standard movie format from 35mm film 24x18mm for stills. At that time an enlargement from double frame was bad enough. But single frame was just intolerable. I think as 5x7 was the most popular shooting format at the time they enlarged to 35mm negs to 5x7 inch. And they looked ok. When they went though an 80 lip line screen the difference was minimized when photojournalism was born in the 1920s. Nowadays in digital a 24x36mm frame gives you 24 hour shooting ability. Day or night indoors in the darkest closet with no flash or tripod. 18x24 much less so. There is not much of a reason why the cameras from those two formats be right about the same size. Either could be pocketable or be a metal munching monster. -- Mark William Rabiner Photographer http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/