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Comment by rplst8 | Hacker News Reader

> With modern materials and good technique, 8x-11x is feasible, but starting to push it at the edges; I have printed 13x17s off 35mm but I would not want to push it much larger.

Many pros push 35mm to billboard sizes. The size of the print doesn't matter. It's the viewing distance.

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Not a pro here, but the greater the distance, the better my pictures look. ;) Back to the subject at hand, it is a little surprising to me that a format closer to square didn't catch on at some point. I suppose that the image quality of the image deteriorates more toward the edge of a circle around the center point. The format that gets the most out of a circle of acceptable quality is a square. As the shape becomes more oblong, more of that 'acceptable quality area' falls outside the image. Perhaps this is one reason that larger formats are closer to square than 35mm.

Well to be pedantic, the format that gets the most out of a circle of acceptable quality is a circle, not a square.

Point taken. That makes me curious if any cameras were ever produced in that format. I would suspect that circular format photography might be used in astronomy where every last bit of the image is valuable.

Yo’re right though, a square is certainly the rectangle of largest area from a circular lens.

If there was a need to maximize the capture for technical reasons I imagine it would be easier to just oversize the film or sensor and trim the corners.

There's a number of fisheyes that produce circular images on rectangular film (obviously, not using the entirety of the film surface).

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