Working within or ignoring native aspect ratio in composition

[William W]

. . . someone told me that I should compose to the native aspect ratio of my camera, and that this would be a good discipline . . .

Who was the "someone"?

Did you ask them why?

***

My general advice - shoot wide, crop later.

WW

Addendum: Please see my post #32 - Max already has mentioned that is was Professional Stills Film Photographer who gave this advice to him - I had failed to notice that point when I posted this response.

[William W]

. . . Perhaps in a bygone Era it saved time in the lab.

It did save time in the lab.

On a job we'd frame and shoot on a 645 Camera for printing to 10x8 prints (crop on long side) and use the 135 Format camera to print to 7x5 (very similar crop on the long side).

If one were printing one's own negs, then it didn't matter that much – we’d just shoot wide and crop later.

Also, framing to the final print size saved time mounting INDIVIDUAL negatives on "masks" for Lab Printing. Printing masked negatives was much more expensive than printing a roll of negatives, so there was a lot of money to be saved to frame, ‘in camera’ to print, with the crop being equal on each of the edges of the long side.

Also – to shoot each roll within the SAME lighting scenario (aka “shoot in lighting batches”) saved money and also time as the first print was colour corrected and then the remainder of the roll was printed to that same colour balance.

The same procedures (both shooting to standard crop and colour balance) are useful and applicable when using digital media, especially when covering an event that compasses different lighting scenarios, especially for the professional Photographer, because time spent in post production is a real cost to the business.

Noted though - shooting in lighting batches and shooting to a standard equal side crop seems to be a lost skill and seems only to be practiced by those who used film, and mainly those whom used film to cover social or sporting events professionally’.

So re-iterating, for one’s casual photography: I think that a good rule of thumb to enhance one creative spirit is to: shoot wide and crop in post.

WW

[James G]

I am not entirely convinced with the lost-pixels-in-printing argument. If you crop a 2:3 image to 1:1, you still have the same resolution and height (or width), but have just lost the ends of the paper. The quality therefore doesn't suffer.

Max, you can take advantage of a RAW file’s high pixel count to increase its print size or print resolution. i.e. you can keep pixel count constant as you increase the print size ,lowering the resolution, or increase the resolution and lower the print size.
Since no resampling is applied in either case image quality is not compromised.
However I may want to print at sizes where resampling is required to maintain image quality at reasonable/recommended viewing distances. Resampling reduces image clarity, ‘softening’ the image and can be a problem for print output, depending on the output resolution and the impact of the applied resampling.
I can of course correct in part by applying a sharpening filter.
Alternately, I can follow a different strategy and ‘acquire’ more pixels at the capture stage i.e shoot multiple frames and then stitch to create a larger canvas.

[Max von MeiselMaus]

Manfred, my comment was with respect to the lost-pixels-when-printing argument, so we might now be talking at cross purposes. I have no argument that, if you don't frame something well in shot, you will run into problems with final reframing. That applies regardless of the aspect ratio you use. So, as always, the aim is to get it right in camera.

However, I can also see the reasoning behind the "shoot wide" suggestion. Particularly if shooting fast, that gives you some margin.

Ted, I mistrust received knowledge. It tends to be nothing more than convention. So, conclusive evidence that any of these "rules" of composition are at all useful would be a well-designed study into whether images arranged according to them are preferred to those arranged in another way. I am a psychologist. When claims are made about what people like, I need to see the proof! Actually, there is a bit of evidence around and some of the "rules" seem to apply, if only in the cultures where they are used (so, as likely to be familiarity leading to preference as much as anything else). But, an interesting topic, aesthetics.

[xpatUSA]

Ted, I mistrust received knowledge. It tends to be nothing more than convention.

Hello Max, I have a feeling that "received knowledge" in your context is more deviant than that which appears at first glance. I am struggling too, with "nothing more than convention". At my level, if I ask "when's the next train to Newcastle?" of a railway employee, I am liable to treat his answer as correct and would expect said train to appear, rather than to just happen to appear by convention.

As to convention, I do take some statements with a pinch of salt. One such being THE CoC for a given sensor is exactly 0.019mm.

So, conclusive evidence that any of these "rules" of composition are at all useful would be a well-designed study into whether images arranged according to them are preferred to those arranged in another way. I am a psychologist. When claims are made about what people like, I need to see the proof!

Then I expect that you are aware of the work by Fechner, summarized in his book Vorschule der Aesthetik, which you would perhaps find inconclusive. The British psychologist McManus concluded however that "there is moderately good evidence for the phenomenon that Fechner championed" but then went on to say that "whether the Golden Section per se is important, as opposed to similar ratios . . . is very unclear".

Actually, there is a bit of evidence around and some of the "rules" seem to apply, if only in the cultures where they are used (so, as likely to be familiarity leading to preference as much as anything else). But, an interesting topic, aesthetics.

Be that as it may, I'm not a great lover of "rules" such as the rule of thirds as apparently used in your "Pierrot", intentionally or no. I myself find images that are composed with harmonic means slightly more pleasant - just like I'm supposed to. RawTherapee has no less than four such guides in their cropping function - the presence of such guides perhaps forced by convention, not unlike driving on the left (where I'm from) because everybody else does

[Max von MeiselMaus]

Yes, the experimental work on the Golden Mean is inconclusive, as with pictures arranged according to the rule of thirds. Although it is claimed the golden mean is found in designs in nature, it just doesn't seem to be universally preferred in terms of aesthetic arrangement. Does that mean I don't use it? Of course I do. Funnily enough, that Pierrot shot you found is a pretty old picture when I wasn't deliberately planning anything. I just tended to arrange the stuff and get it all in the shot. I was aware of the rules of composition, though, so might have applied it implicitly. Who knows? It was six years ago.

And, by "received knowledge", I mean that which is implicitly and generally accepted as fact just because we have heard it so many times. No proof is asked for or given. I am not sure how your train times analogy fits with that. If most people believed that there was a 15:40 to Newcastle and I turned up at the station to catch it and it never turned up, it is pretty well refuted!

[James G]

OK, Comments and advice proffered earlier are patently based on 'practical' and I also believe 'tested' practice.
Most people using this forum requesting advice from the members, because they are looking for their experience of photography, or are seeking opinions based on that experience.

One could reasonably expect that such advice and opinion will be used/tested by the questioner who will then be in a position to determine if it has helped them.
Not sure where definitions of 'received knowledge' inform that process, or that I understand the direction this thread has developed so I'm bowing out .

[Max von MeiselMaus]

James, yes, it has gone a bit off track, as these things can, but I have found this discussion to be very useful. I have heard a number of sides of the story and this has given has given me plenty of food for thought. It has set my bit of "received wisdom" (which was the hard and fast "rule" that I was given when I started out in photography and that I am now questioning) in a practical and historical context, and that helps me evaluate it sensibly. We can only make a good decisions by being aware of all the pros and cons and weighing them up and there is a lot to weigh up here, as there is (probably predictably) no general consensus. However, most people do seem to stick to one or a small set of aspect ratios, for a variety of reasons. I am not sure I expected that, so that has been very useful.

Thank you to everyone who has given their take on the matter. It has been illuminating.

[Dave Humphries]

One thing that I did think of is what a set of images might look like if presented together, either online or printed. Odd shapes and sizes might look less coherent than a set of images produced a limited set of aspect ratios.

This is certainly true, especially if the images are effectively a chronological sequence.

Hands up all those who find it infuriating when an album on a web site requires one to click an arrow on a specific area of each image in order advance to the next image, but that area keeps moving about your own screen in relation to where the mouse is?

That's one situation when different aspect ratios on successive image can be a right PITA.

My advice; get better web site - or if viewing; use the keyboard arrow keys (if possible).

Oh - and one more thing:
While I'm ranting about badly implemented image galleries on websites, I detest those that insist all thumbnails must be square, so they crop the sides off landscape orientation images and top/bottom off portrait orientation images.

Makes a mockery of all the photographer's hard work composing their shots - that said, there are several people selling their work who don't even seem to have noticed - it's a really bad way to display their portfolio, in my humble opinion.

Sorry Max, I may have taken the thread in another direction now.

[xpatUSA]

And, by "received knowledge", I mean that which is implicitly and generally accepted as fact just because we have heard it so many times. No proof is asked for or given. I am not sure how your train times analogy fits with that. If most people believed that there was a 15:40 to Newcastle and I turned up at the station to catch it and it never turned up, it is pretty well refuted!

There appears to be a proverbial "sting in the tail" above, so we might as well go another round. If "most people" received their knowledge from published timetables, phoning the station, riding that very train a statistically significant number of times, etc. then that received knowledge is valid enough for most travelers purposes, I would have thought - and your sample of one negative event would refute nothing!

Simple statistics, eh? On the other hand, if you showed up 23 times and there was no 15:40 train then you could have a little more confidence in your refutation :-)

[Manfred M]

Manfred, my comment was with respect to the lost-pixels-when-printing argument, so we might now be talking at cross purposes. I have no argument that, if you don't frame something well in shot, you will run into problems with final reframing. That applies regardless of the aspect ratio you use. So, as always, the aim is to get it right in camera.

Agreed. I suspect we are on exactly the same page here. Allowing enough space to allow flexibility in creating the final product(s) must be considered when taking the photograph.

[William W]

Max - Sorry I didn't notice all the detail in your Post #7.

If I had read that it was a Professional Film Photographer who gave this advice to you - I would not have asked the questions in my Post #21 and would have crafted the bulk of my Post #22 to read as an outline describing (some of) the probable reasons for the advice this Photographer gave to you.

WW

[Max von MeiselMaus]

William, your account of the process was interesting. It does go some way to explain why my photographer was so adamant on sticking to the same aspect ratio. Messing about with aspect ratios would produce practical problems in printing. This has to be part of what started this idea off, surely.

Dave, at the risk of going off piste again, I treat thumbnails as a detail of the image, rather than a reduced version of it. So I find an area of the shot that would produce an intriguing square image and use that. That does do something different to having a true thumbnail and isn't perhaps ideal.

[dennybeall]

Many years ago I kept aspect ratio in mind so that photos would fit to columns in the paper. Now, with digital cameras and Photoshop I simply take the shot that I personally like the best. Old retired guys are allowed!!! to do that.....................

[Dave Humphries]

Dave, at the risk of going off piste again, I treat thumbnails as a detail of the image, rather than a reduced version of it. So I find an area of the shot that would produce an intriguing square image and use that. That does do something different to having a true thumbnail and isn't perhaps ideal.

The sites I am talking about do not have a separate file for the thumbnail in which you could choose which bit of a rectangular shot to use, they are automatically 'made' from the central area only

However, it doesn't have to be that way; one of the reasons I chose to go with PBase for my online albums is because their automatic thumbnails retain the aspect ratio of the shot.

It works for me
I appreciate others may desire a more uniform grid structure to their thumbnail pages and that's fine, personal choice.

Cheers, Dave