Breaking the Rules: 4x5 with an APS-C Camera

Those familiar with our 4x5 adapters knew we offer them for a variety of camera systems. We've historically supported most major DSLR systems, a few medium format backs, and we've even branched out into mirrorless. If you've looked through our listings, you're bound to notice something:

All of our 4x5 adapters are geared towards full-frame sensors (or larger).

If you're shooting on an APS-C camera, it's easy to feel left out. If your camera's mount also offers full-frame cameras, then an eventual upgrade would one day let you use our adapter on your 4x5 camera. But for a camera in the Fujifilm X ecosystem, you'd be out of luck.

Just to clarify, we don't have any sort of vendetta against APS-C cameras. In fact, a few of the Fotodiox staff use APS-C bodies for the majority of our creative work. It all stems from the design of the 4x5 adapter.

If you're not familiar, our 4x5 adapter requires taking multiple images to be stitched in post production. Sean has posted a video that show the whole process, but for the full-frame cameras, you shoot the top row of photos, and flip the rear standard to shoot a bottom row of photos. There's enough overlap between the two row that your stitching software of choice should have a fine time combining the image for your next masterpiece.

The issue with the APS-C is that the smaller sensor size is just small enough to remove the most important aspect of the adapter's process: the overlap. I threw caution to the wind and used the adapter on my Fujifilm X-T200 anyway, just to see what would happen. Since we don't have a direct Fujifilm X adapter, I had to use our EF adapter with an EF to Fuji X adapter. Here are my results, after running the two rows through post processing:

Photoshop did its best, surely, but the image above shows just how critical the overlap is. As is, I think the adapter could do well as a tool for panoramic photos when used with an APS-C camera. This application would likely even be feasible with a Micro Four-Thirds camera (I'll save that for a different article).

For the image above, I had the camera set to the horizontal position. I tried the process again, with the camera set to the vertical position with the sensor dimensions in mind: a full-frame set in the horizontal position has a 24mm height, which matches up to the width of the APS-C sensor. On paper, I should have much better results.

There's definitely an improvement in the overlap between the two rows, but you can still see areas that lack coverage. When I looked at the diagram and the white dots on the adapter's ruler, the second and fourth shots seemed a little too far from the center point to have a good overlap. As a fallback, I took an additional shot at the +/- 10mm mark as below:

The extra shots were exactly what I needed to fill in the rest of the image.

Capturing the Missing Row

It's good to know that the APS-C camera in the vertical orientation has the coverage needed for a pretty sizable stitch (69.3mm x 42.7mm), but I still wonder if we can make the horizontal orientation work. Using our failed stitch as an approximation, it looks like we were only missing about a 5mm-thick band of information. Given the 4x5 adapter's design, there's no way to implement that, unfortunately, but we're not out of luck.

If I swap my EF-FX adapter out for a Shift adapter, I get a little more wiggle room. All I need to do is rotate the adapter so that the adapter's shift direction is vertical. While using the adapter, I did find that shifting all the way to the far edges of the range causes some vignetting, and I'm guessing that's from the mask on the front component of the adapter.

Pulling back on the shift alleviates the issue, which does work out because we don't need a whole lot of shift to make this work. After incorporating this third row of images, we get a much more complete image.

I've always dismissed APS-C as a viable option for 4x5 stitching; it never worked before, so why should it now? When our 4x5 adapters with a full-frame sensor, it's already a time-consuming process. Using an APS-C sensor instead means you don't get the same level of resolution, and to compensate for the smaller sensors, you need to take 4 or 5 extra images. Despite the extra work it may take, I would consider this to be a successful endeavor. Any time you can find a successful solution that works so that you can try something new, that's enough to justify the effort. Some limitations are worth exploring, and that's one of the many reasons to adapt.