Neighbor's house

[Steve (FloppyDog)]

I shot this with a 1940's era Minolta Autocord. The negatives from this camera are 6x6 (6cm x 6cm) format which is why it's square rather than rectangular. These have sort of a cult following, and some collectors only collect Autocords. This was one of my favorite cameras and I had boatloads of fun with it. Why I sold it, I'll never know.

If anyone's curious what an Autocord looks like:

www.pbase.com/image/61936068

Attachments:

[OrcaBob]

I'm totally unfamiliar with the Autocord, but that's an intriguing format (portrait=landscape, which would take the glamour and panache out of rotating the camera 90 degrees for a model!).

The image is very charming, too.

[NCPhotoTrekker]

You know, the square format is a little different, but there are quite a few photographers out there who will crop an image to square regardless of native format. It might have started from images done with an Autocord. Regardless, the square composition does have a lot going for it, and can be used very effectively as a tool, rather than seen as a shortfalling of the camera system.

[Steve (FloppyDog)]

Autocords were very popular with portrait photographers because of the format. I still have some Senior albums in storage that I never used that were designed with square sleeves especially for it. Group portraits are another matter though.

Of course, there are other cameras that shot in this format but they all pretty much died out with the TLR style.

[juanita]

I like it! The camera looks quite intriguing. When you say a 6x6 format, whats that mean? I've seen a few older ones at an open air market, I came across 3-4 pretty cool looking older cam's, I was tempted to buy but since I'm not familiar on how they work, kind of film, where do i get, developing, etc-I passed them up-would be nice as a collection though.

[OrcaBob]

A "6x6" format means that it takes a 6cm by 6cm square image.

Most cameras these days take a 4x6 image.

[Steve (FloppyDog)]

Oct 14, 2009 18:37:21 GMT -5 juanita said:

I like it! The camera looks quite intriguing. When you say a 6x6 format, whats that mean? I've seen a few older ones at an open air market, I came across 3-4 pretty cool looking older cam's, I was tempted to buy but since I'm not familiar on how they work, kind of film, where do i get, developing, etc-I passed them up-would be nice as a collection though.

Sorry, I missed this question but Bob explained it accurately. Likewise, 6x7 means 6cm x 7cm, 645 format is 6cm x 4.5cm etc. These sizes are what is referred to as medium format. Large format, then is measured in inches. I.E. 4x5 is 4 inches by 5 inches, 8x10 is 8inches by 10 inches etc. It's kind of confusing at first, being as a 4x5 format is larger than 6x7.

Playing around with old cameras is a lot of fun. Many older models you can't get film for readily, but sometimes you can find places that deal in older/obselete sizes. With some cameras that use sheet film, you can cut film yourself if you need a weird size. Finding places to process and print can be something of a challenge, especially with odd sizes.

[NCPhotoTrekker]

Oct 15, 2009 18:08:02 GMT -5 OrcaBob said:

A "6x6" format means that it takes a 6cm by 6cm square image.

Most cameras these days take a 4x6 image.

Yes, the film plane is 6cm by 6cm and is sqare. The 4x6 that Bob is talking about is more the ratio that cameras shoot in today. The actual size of a 35mm frame of film or a full frame sensor is 36x24mm...an obviously smaller size than the 6x6cm. This is why you are able to get larger prints from the larger format cameras.

You can read more about sensor/film sizes in my tutorial on that very subject.

phototrek.446photography.com/2009/08/28/tips-and-tricks-sensor-size-matters.aspx