How do you deal with aspect ratio?

[Clovishound]

I'm curious as to how everyone deals with the issue of aspect ratios and finished prints. I generally prefer the 4x6 (1.5) ratio that is native to the camera. It is how I compose in the camera, and in Lightroom. The fly in the ointment is when I decide to print them. If I am making larger prints, I tend to print them on 11x17 paper and can either stretch the image slightly to achieve the 4x6 ratio, or print it as an 11x16.5 on an 11x17 sheet, and trim 1/2 an inch from the finished print. If I want a smaller print, the standard these days is 8 1/2 x 11 (1.29). This is significantly different aspect ratio from 4x6.

The software on the printer will allow me to choose what I am willing to cut off to achieve the desired ratio. 8x12 paper is hard to find, and harder to afford. The only other option to preserve the original ratio is to trim the 8x11.5 to 7.66x11.5. These seem too small to me.

Using a recent picture of mine to illustrate, I produced two versions of this image one at 1.5 and one at 1.29.

First the original 1.5:

And now the 1.29 that fits an 8x11.5 sheet of photo paper:

While this might not be the best example, I find the composition to be better in the 1.5 AR. Taking some background out of the right side in order to show all of the handler's face results in the focus point of the owl's eye too far to the right of the image. It looks to me that the forum stretches the image, as these have the same ratio as displayed here. When viewing the files in Lightroom or Photo, these two pictures show up very differently.

There are some photos that really don't work well at all at 1.29. I suppose that including a little more extra on all sides is not a bad thing, that may allow one to have more options when making ratio adjustments post processing. I'm still in the rut of film photography that aimed at making the image as close as possible to finished in the camera. Still I am frustrated with the restrictions of a more squat ratio in most of my photographs.

 

[Fred Kingston_RIP]

I use Lightroom...The first consideration is "how exactly the image is going to be used" ??? Social media or printed????? If I'm "printing" I generally crop for 11X14 because that's the majority of what I print... In your image, I'd select the 11X14 aspect ratio and then select as much of the human to the left as possible... Most of stuff, ends up in landscape mode... but it's easy in LR to swap between Landscape and portrait simply by hitting the X key... and panning the image around inside the crop line for balance... This is all down FIRST before any other edits... Of course, LR is non-destructive, and RAW edits are easily "reset"... It's also easy enough to create copies in LR with different aspect ratios and crops... Better images may get 3, 4 or 5 copies with different crops before I settle on one... Sometimes, after letting an image "age" I'll even re-visit it for a totally different edit just because newer, better, editing processes become available that warrant a different view... My stuff keeps changing...

 

[Clovishound]

I've thought about making different versions for different ratio applications. I usually end up just doing the quick positioning the template in the Epson software when sending the info to the printer. It literally only takes seconds to do.

I know what you mean about letting them age. While there is nothing like that "new photo smell", as the Pup puts it, I often later find that either I need to make some refinements, start post processing from scratch, or sometimes just round file an image I really liked right off the bat. Right now, a lot of revisiting is because I have learned more about post processing than I knew when I first worked on an image. I've only been messing with post processing for a little over a year. Some of the darkroom work I did years ago carries over, but it's a brave new world now.

I do wish 8x12 photo paper would become more popular. Funny how not too many years ago, 8x10 was the standard enlargement.

 

[Fred Kingston_RIP]

It's ironic that the natural aspect of a 35mm film format and sensor is 8X12 and print paper in that aspect is so difficult to find. And pre-cut mats and frames in that aspect are even less available...

 

[Clovishound]

Hot dog buns come in packs of 10.

Hot dogs come in packs of 8.

 

[wev]

Hot dog buns come in packs of 10.

Hot dogs come in packs of 8.

Which is why I never eat hot dogs -- brats from the case, my count.

 

[wev]

I've never had call to print anything as a straight image, so I use 7.5/10 or 1/1 for an online crop. If I am using a pic for a poster or something, I re-crop the original to fit the need.

 

[Clovishound]

I guess the main issue I have is not the mechanics of the cropping, but the change in composition that so often seems like a bad compromise.

I realize that by printing my own, I have the option of choosing final formats that don't violate the composition excessively, although at a price. I suppose the 800 lb gorilla in the room is that the 8x11.5 is a very affordable choice when printing, but just doesn't fit in with optimal composition with a large number of images.

Perhaps I need to train my brain into a different box when shooting/editing.

 

[Fred Kingston_RIP]

That's more likely the issue... It's all about the composition to begin with... If the subject is "centered" within the frame at exposure, there should be little problem in losing some fringe area around the subject... Although, that also is dependent on what you the photographer, is trying to convey with his image... Obviously there are different challenges... Your image above is one... the human on the frame side conveys a sense of scale with the bird and it's tied to the bird...there's a story there. Whereas a similar image of the bird by itself, centered in the frame would be independent of the frame and create an acceptable composition... One tells a story of the relationship between the human and the bird, and the other is simply a depiction of just the bird...

 

[Needa]

There is no reason you must print edge to edge on the 8.5 X11it can bet trimmed after printing using a good paper cutter. A professional wedding photographer I knew would tend to shoot a little wide for formals the reasoning being that the final crop for the image could be 8X10, 5X7, etc. If you are shooting with a zoom just pull back a little for a couple of shots give yourself options.

 

[Clovishound]

I have trimmed some 8.5 x 11 down to 7.66x11.5. They seem a little small to me. Still, you can't have everything. I suppose I could purchase 11x14 paper and trim it down after printing, although it's over twice the cost of 8x11.5 and nearly the cost of 11x17.

 

[BF Hammer]

Just a few ideas from my own experiences. I like to shoot a little wide and have room to do a crop. I think that working with Raw files kind of gives me the mindset similarly to thinking about working with print film. I can use the enlarger in the darkroom to finalize the composition. In modern thinking, the crop tool in RawTherapee or Lightroom fine-tunes the composition. The original Raw files and image profile file are saved preserved, so going back to do a re-crop for a new aspect ratio is trivial.

I like to display 3:2, same as the original camera image. But I change that for when I print to match the output size. Most recent example for me was composing my 2023 calendar. I set the image ratio as 11:14 because the large-format calendars I was printer was 11x14 inches. I actually had a pool of 30 images copied into calendar work folder and gave the 11:14 crop to each. Just evaluating after that helped me trim out some excess photos to get down to the 13 I would use.

When we talk about being underexposed or overexposed, it is far better to be underexposed as you can adjust that brighter in post and not have lost detail. Shooting wider similarly allows you flexibility in composition. You can cut smaller, but gluing together a wider image is a total bear of a job.