[Medium FormatPro]

Seriously, a 6x7 would probably make more sense as a mirrorless camera, wouldn't it? (to avoid mirror shake and keep size down)

Over the years both Hasselblad and Mamiya have tried this - Mamiya has a current digital medium format camera without a viewfinder, but it's a bit of a flop. But on a somewhat smaller platform, there is a Leica mirrorless that runs about 2k - and gets some of the best reviews of any camera currently on the market

[Frank Gosebruch]

If you have a dio

Look at how this camera is cranked. The lens is not parallel on (either axis)to the film plane, the lens is elevated and whatever this guy is taking a picture of, you cannot emulate that shot on fixed plane cameras.

If you have a dio

The whole point of a camera like that is to be able to align your film plane with your subject and to have complete control over the angle of the focal plane. I'm not sure you can ever completely automate that. But cameras even now have trouble deciding in 2D what should be in focus. Add front and back elevation and lift and rotation to the process and I'm not sure you could even write a algorithm that could process that. I guess if you have one of those monster computers IBM taught to play chess, and a very good team of programmers. But it's unlikely it would ever be completely auto-fucus. You would have to have some way of telling the computer what you want it to do. Like selecting 3 points you want in focus in an image and telling the computer to do the math. But another advantage to tilt is aligning the film plane for capturing vertical faces in landscape and for keeping building lines parallel in acrhcitecture. If you look at camera equipment, fixed front and back parallel to each other is a very simple system. If you look at the possibilities of a view camera, only a very small percentage of landscape and architectural shots taken with DSLRs or even SLRs would be taken the way they are, if you were using a view camera. You really have no idea how much more flexibility you have with a view camera if you haven't used one. You also have no idea how much time you can waste trying to get the perfect picture, while learning to use one.

Or the short answer is, view cameras are the epitome of mirrorless



Look at how this camera is cranked. The lens is not parallel on (either axis)to the film plane, the lens is elevated and whatever this guy is taking a picture of, you cannot emulate that shot on fixed plane cameras.



It makes me incredulous when people talking about having more control with an FF. You get next to no control with fixed film and focal plane systems. Whichever one you choose.

WIkipedia's explanation.




My latest plan is Canon 6d with a tilt lens and an tablet computer for focus peaking connected by USB. Many thousands, but doable, as opposed to a view camera with a scanning back, which as far as I can tell is just way out of my range and too long an exposure time to be functional much of the time, even for landscapes.. But that wouldn't give me the monster resolution a view camera is capable of.

Well, actually I didn't want to take a picture when I made this photography.
It is just an illustration about camera movements for Wikimedia and the German Wikipedia.
This movement is actually a little to hard for this kind of lens with 5x7 sheet film.
With these movements the accessory finder is even useless ;-)