Ordinary Prints

[socket]

I'm going to print some of my GX100 pictures and have a very silly question: I'm shooting pictures in RAW 10M - which I think is 4:3. To get 4x6 photos (which seems to be the standard size over here) do I have to crop the photos to 3:2 first?

Any tips on getting photos prepared for printing?

Except for adding a little contrast and fiddling with the exposure control, I don't do much processing.

 

[socket]

I had some good responses on a car forum that I frequent, so I'll copy them here:

Response 1:

I think of the sensor in my camera the same way that I think of the screen on my big TV.

The boundaries of the sensor or the screen don't determine the composition of the content.

I can watch Casablanca at a 1.33:1 ratio or Forbidden Planet at 2.35:1 on my set. The content is not required to fill all of the space on the screen all of the time.

The most famous medium format camera of all time is the Hasselblad which shot 2 1/4" square images. It was the king of advertising and magazine photography. It went to the moon. I'll bet 95% of all commercially reproduced Hasselblad images were never printed full frame. In fact, even today, most widescreen movies are shot on a full 35mm frame and cropped for theatrical presentation.

Don't let your vision be determined by the shape of your sensor or the popular "snapshot" printing format. Yes, 4x6" is the most popular format for small printing. But 11x14", a common large print format, is more closely matched to the 4x3 aspect ratio. 4x3 also fits 8x10" better than the sensor shape found in most APS-c DSLRs...but these considerations should be secondary. There is no one ideal aspect ratio...for prints or movies.

The picture should be composed in way that best suits the material and your vision of that material.

If you are doing a run of pictures for cousin Ed's Birthday party and you plan to make a bunch of cheap prints, by all means, leave extra space so that people don't get their heads cut of in 4x6" prints.

Just don't use the snapshot format as your guide for serious composition.

-----------------

Reponse 2:

I sort of agree, leaving a bit of space is good as then you can choose the print size easier, but it also makes it so you have to crop to get the perfect composition. I prefer to compose for 3:2 or 5:4 depending on what I'm shooting, I know where 5:4 is in my viewfinder. If you always rely on cropping for composition then you never learn good composition IMHO.

 

[rui fernandes]

The picture should be composed in way that best suits the material and your vision of that material.

If you always rely on cropping for composition then you never learn good composition IMHO.

I think the two lines are precious for any "artist".

Yes, the composition "should" serve the way the artist want's to express or communicate the "object". It's a "pain" when a very good Idea/Concept/Object is limited by some composition rule(s), not letting it get the unique (exceptional?) value of a composition of it's own

Yes, we "shouldn't" rely on cropping for composition. But we can also "see" the final result from a "raw" image when we press the shutter, knowing in advance what we'll do to the composition with the tools we have by hand, so be it digital or analogic.

In the end, I think it will be a matter of personal experience, giving the opportunity to learn and test different ways. The value, for me, is more related to genuinity ;-)

(sorry if all this sounds like a lecture, but it's the way I allways try to work with my students, and it's so difficult to resist... sorry, sorry ... :roll: )

Edit: two examples.

First one, the shot was made with the intention of using distortion correction tools. It was impossible to get the composition/ligh/etc in a frontal shot. So the "raw" image may be considered as a way to get the final result

Second example, I wanted this structure to be so evident that I cropped the rest of the image. It was my intention to remove it from the beggining and I had no choice (or concern) for the "right" proportional frame.

Finaly, considering your question about printing. I have no answers but only doubts about that too. Generaly I check the formats at the printing lab and try to adjust the photos inside the available dimensions. If I'll need to cut the margins, I'll do it. But I won't change a composition to "adjust" it to an "artificial" frame ;-)

(second lecture! Soooo sorry again!!! :? :roll: )

 

[socket]

I have no problems with lectures

Your first example seems to have involved quite a bit of processing. Was that something you anticipated in taking the picture, or did you take the unprocessed image and 'have a bit of fun with it'?

I like the 4:3 format and I'll probably stick with it, but experiment with 3:2 (and 1:1!).

Format was not a variable that I was conscious of, before thinking of printing some 'snaps'. All of a sudden, I have to consider format and the additional effort to convert to 3:2 is a bit off-putting, BUT I haven't printed any photos from the GX, so I'm quite curious as to how they will turn out.

All this makes me realize that I should sign up with a photo-sharing service, where format won't be an issue. I don't like the interface at Flickr very much, photobucket seems better, and I may try out pbase too (although that is a subscription site).

 

[thelps]

Socket,

I'm not sure if I will be much help but I shoot my GRD II in 3:2 mode. This way I frame all images for postcard print size, which is where the bulk of my images end up. I prefer not to have to crop at all and print just what I have taken and this simplifies it for me. Occasionally if I have a good image and can find the time to work on it I will crop and enlarge to suit but I generally hate losing pixels so I mainly crop to suit the ratio of the chosen enlargement.

In the early days of digital I got too many prints back which were "miss-matached" with paper ratio to file ratio and I got too much image cut off.
If I print something 16:9 from my LX2 I get a lot of wasted paper but thats the nature of it. I guess if we had roll paper inkjet printers it would all change again!

The biggest problem as I see it is that the printing formats offered by the photo print places are all differing ratios - ie: a postcard 5x7 is a different ratio to 8x10 which my local photo finishers offer.

 

[socket]

Actually, your post is helpful. It's interesting to hear what format you prefer and why.

I chose 4:3 because I read somewhere that that was the size of the sensor and I didn't want to 'under-utilize' it by choosing another format.

Now I have to experiment and see which format I prefer. The P&S that I was using before (a Canon A540) only has one format, so the issue didn't even exist.

Fun, fun, fun... :geek:

 

[CHICHORNIO]

I used to shot in 4:3 in my GRD 2 but I recently changed to 3:2 because I make my own prints at home at A4 (bigger prints will show noise in a small sensor cameras). I don´t like to make any resize or cropping on my pictures, trying to think that I´m shotting slide film. With 4:3 ratio, I always loose some info of the frame. Good luck with your choice.