Kirk's Take (Kirk Tuck #4)

They stole our choice of aspect ratios. Now we’re getting them back

By Kirk Tuck

When I started taking photographs, back in 1978, I picked up a 35mm camera because that's what matched my budget and, I thought, my needs. I spent some years trying desperately trying to confine my vision of what a scene or portrait should look like into a long and stringy frame that never quite worked. When I needed to shoot horizontally I always needed to slice off all the junk that showed up on the either side of the "good part" of the frame. When I shot vertically there was alway twenty five or thirty percent of the top or bottom of the frame that needed to be chiseled away to calm my eyes.

Gradually I became habituated to the long, skinny and mathematically clumsy frame and tried my best. I figured that having a photographic vision that was fluid and smooth and easy must be for people with some innate, natural talent. Like those lucky bastards who can just pick up a guitar and make wonderful music after a handful of lessons.

Then one day a friend who was also interested in photography showed me a camera he'd just picked up. It was a twin lens YashicaMat rollfilm camera that shot 12 square frames on each roll of 120 film. Square frames!

My friend couldn't warm up to the reversed image in the waist level finder and suggested that I give the camera a whirl. I reached down and pulled the finder apparatus into position, flipped up the little attached magnifier, looked through and focused. And, in an instant, something somewhat magical happened: Everywhere I pointed the camera a perfect composition sprang into being. I could point the camera at the intersection of a concrete curb and the asphalt of a street and, there it was, perfect composition.

And the joy I felt when I lined up my first informal portrait was wonderful. It eclipsed everything I'd done in photography to that point.

I felt like I couldn't afford the camera. I was still in school and working a part time job. But when I started down the stairs of my apartment, intent on returning the YashicaMat to my friend, I realized that I couldn’t afford not to buy it. The effect was that powerful.

When I decided to pursue the rigorous and noble undertaking of professional, commercial photography I went right out and bought a used Hasselblad 500 CM and 150mm Sonnar Lens. Every time I looked through the finder of that camera I knew the one thing I wouldn’t have to worry about would be framing. I had found my perfect aspect ratio.

And I found, when looking at the work of others—even masters—I have always had a prejudice for the calmness and formal structure of the square. I have friends who've used panoramic cameras and all the other formats. I've dabbled (mostly unsuccessfully) with 6x7 cm, 6x9 cm, 6x12 cm 6x4.5 cm, 4x5 inch, and 8x10 inch cameras and almost every time I find myself chaffing at the aesthetic discomfort of all that wasted space.

"No Problem." I thought. "I'm happy just shooting these marvelous, magical squares of color and black and white." And I did. Cartons and cartons of Fuji and Kodak films. Mostly Tri-X, but other flavors when the menu called for them.

And then one day it all collapsed.

We made the transition to digital. Clients loved it. You could shoot quick. You didn't need Polaroid. Etc., etc. We’ve heard it all a thousand times before. But the thing that really never got talked about was the most important thing we lost: aspect ratio choice.

If you bought a professional level digital camera you had no choice of aspect ratios. You got stuck with the nasty old 35mm, 3:2 ratio whether you liked it or not. And my battle with wasted and unusually configured space returned. And it was nasty. One maker of digital backs offered a square back but it was priced for people working for jumbo clients in world class markets. I was stuck with mainstream.

I'm sure there are those among us who can look at a 3:2 frame and immediately, and comfortably divine the "presence" of the square without assistance. Good for them. I'm not one of them. I like a little assistance from my camera in the form of clearly defined boundaries. Edges. Guide posts. When I look into the finder of my camera I want to see a square frame and I want everything not in the square frame to be excluded from view. And given the popularity of square frame cameras from the 1950s right up to the age of digital, I'm sure there are many who agree with me.

I suspect that rigorous boundaries are helpful because they eliminate one variable of choice and so let us concentrate on composition in a different way, regardless of which format you favor. Cropping after the fact is not the same.

One of the reasons I have been so passionately enamored of the mirrorless cameras is that removing the optical finder from the equation means camera makers can give us back our freedom of choice when it comes to the configuration of our framing via the electronic viewfinder. I bought the Olympus E-P2 with its electronic viewfinder largely because I can set the camera so that, when I bring the finder to my eye, I see a square image framed by black. And every EVF capable camera I can think of strikes the same blow for Freedom of Choice.

If you like wide, they give you 16:9. If you like that pedestrian and ubiquitous 35mm frame they're happy to give you the option to "3:2 it" all you want. And, true to most of the sensors in the mirrorless cameras I tend to use, they also offer the stodgy and boxy 4:3 ratio. You are free to use any of these "lesser" aspect ratios or join me in re-embracing the most intoxicating of formats, 1:1. It even sounds uniquely balanced. One-to-one.

Given the quality of camera files these days I've come to believe that flexibility in setting your preferred aspect ratio is one of the most important factors for overall photographic success and, that the move back to a gracious banquet of aspect ratios is a sign that we're moving past the gnawing hunger for more pixels and less noise into the more lofty sphere of actually thinking about the content and artful arrangement of our images instead of just their legibility.

If you are consistently uneasy composing images I would suggest that you and your present camera format may be at odds. If you have access to an electronic viewfinder camera with changeable aspect ratios you might want to take it out for spin and see what works for you. One size fits all is rarely a good plan in the mystical world of art. Or in the pragmatic world of photography. And if you really love the 3:2? Well aren't you just as happy as a pig at the trough?

SUPPORT ASPECT RATIO FREEDOM!

Kirk

Photographer, photo book author, and photography blogger Kirk Tuck's monthly column on TOP appears on the last Saturday of every month.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Robert Roaldi]

You know that thing people do in photo editors, where they "straighten" an image by drawling a line, then crop by moving other lines or corners around at will. Cameras need an interface that lets you do that in the viewfinder (or LCD) freely, without regard to aspect ratios.

Maybe that guy who wrote the iPhone app to behave like a camera could look into it.

[Richard E.]

Kirk Tuck said: "Do you know of any painters using long or tall canvasses who, when entirely finished with a painting, chop off the parts they don't like?"

Yes, kind of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28painting%29#Alterations_to_original

[ronin]

I'm a big fan of square, but I expect it is an oddball, if such a perfect shape can be an oddball.

That is, I don't know that square was mainstream until the waist-level reversed-image TLRs demanded it, since there was no good way to lay the camera on the long vs short axis...

Many medium format photographers later came to prefer oblong formats- not just for matching with printing paper sizes, but because they felt 'constrained' by the 'boring' square.

Although the square is a more efficient user of the entire image, I don't believe the 4/3 cameras actually utilize more of the image area. Rather, I think they use LESS, cutting off from their native rectangular shape.

Finally, the most efficient image shape of course is the circle, since that's how your circular lens resolves images. Note that the original Kodak of the 1880s delivered output exactly in the circular format.

Which raises the question: What cameras today can deliver the ethereal beauty of the circular format?

[Mike Johnston]

"Note that the original Kodak of the 1880s delivered output exactly in the circular format. Which raises the question: What cameras today can deliver the ethereal beauty of the circular format?"

ronin,
We just discussed this, not three weeks ago:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/01/circles.html

Mike

[Peter]

Another related personal preference that keeps cropping up in the comments (pun intended) is whether to crop after shooting the picture to get your, and the subject's, ideal aspect ratio; or to compose with a given aspect ratio in camera and not crop later. I don't like to crop because it opens up a can of worms for me as far as choices to obsess over and I like the discipline of composing when I shoot. I move my feet, the angle of the camera, I choose which prime lens to use -- all with the idea that I'm trying to achieve something at the moment and not leaving it until later. Like I said, a personal preference.

[Josh Hawkins]

I dislike having the choice of aspect ratios.

I recently got a LX-5 which has the option of easily picking among 4 aspect ratios. Now I switch between them willy-nilly. It's like having a zoom lens for aspect ratio. Freeing, but it doesn't force me to make my aspect ratio work. That's why I like fixed focal lenses, you have a lens, it's always too tight, or too loose by just a little, and maybe a lot, but you figure out how to make it work. The end result isn't always what you would've planned, but that improvisation can add a dynamic layer to an image.

I've been trying to work with the 1:1 option on it, and I love 1:1 in that I hate it, but I can see differently when you using it. My problem with using it is that I can turn it to 3:2 easily, my preferred ratio, and I'm not forced to go find a completely different camera. Give me a camera with 1:1, and no other choice.

[JH]

Amazing! Based on the responses so far, fewer than 5% of us say the subject dictates the aspect ratio of the picture not the camera.
I have never felt constrained by the aspect ratios of film,paper or sensors. In fact, I prefer zooms to ensure I get the subject in the frame. Then I crop to what I like for composition. But, I have always known I am weird...

[Dan Berry]

Great article Kirk,Thank You. I feel your pain,I have always felt that the subject should lead us to the crop. But the truth is I am often pulled to find subjects that fit whatever format I have in my hand at that minute. Sometimes I have to slap myself in the back of the head, shoot the picture knowing that I will later have to crop. I like to fill the frame ,I cannot help it.

Do or use whatever works let someone else worry about the theory.

Dan

[Peter]

Kirk, I just loved the picture of the woman in black. Made me want to know all about her. That is a good test of a portrait.

And I really like square, having used a Rolliflex and Hassleblad many years back. Thanks for reminding me to go and re-experiment again.

[Chad Thompson]

During my last camera purchase I had the luxury of choosing formats and since it's wet plate, cropping after the fact is not an option I have. Since 4x5 is too small for final output I chose the 5x7, whole plate and 7x7 inserts. I've had the camera for a year now and have just prepared the square glass sheets. Maybe next year I'll get around to shooting them but currently I'm too in love with the whole plate to think about squares.

[Ben Rosengart]

Since there's been some discussion of RAW and non-native aspects, I'd like to add that in the case of the Panasonic G3, the ratio used in shooting is reflected in the RAW file.

It's yet another thing to like about this wonderful and perhaps somewhat underappreciated camera.

[Andrew Meilstrup]

I personally don't find a lot of resonance with a square composition. I'll crop in post to a square if I find that it makes a stronger image, but I just don't quite see that way.

I do prefer 3:2 for landscapes. Always have. But at the same time, I recognize it as a strange contrivance that Oskar Barnack is responsible for—he wanted to use Edison 35mm film for his landscape camera; the standard format on that film was 4 sprockets, which produced a 4:3 image. This small format didn't hold up well to enlargement for still content with the film emulsions of the time. Solution? Double from 4 sprockets to 8. Interestingly, the Olympus Pen F was half-frame, which is just Oskar Barnack's 8 sprockets reduced to 4, and that same format is to this day the standard usage of 35mm film in cinematography.

I find that 3:2 really doesn't work that well for printing. And I cannot abide these wide formats for vertical shots. Whenever I shoot a vertical shot, I have to switch the camera back to 4:3. The world might be long and skinny in a horizontal dimension, but not so vertically. At least the way I see it.

And you know what? I find 4:3 to be a good compromise. And if I know i'm shooting for print, I shoot 4:3. It just works better for printing. And aside from that, I can make great shots in 4:3. Most of my great shots are 4:3, in fact (though I really attribute that to how long I was shooting on my E-520) But then, I usually find that I compose for the frame—regardless of what the frame is—rather than cropping later on. Whether my camera is 16:9 or 3:2 or 4:3, I'll find the best composition.

One day I'll try just shooting squares, and seeing what that gets me. Lord knows the GH2 makes it easy.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

While there are lots of inputs to the decisions about aspect ratios, some of them are external.

If you're shooting fine art, then you control the whole process. Ditto if you're shooting snapshots. You can do what you want, and any potential audience basically gets to decide "yes" or "no" at the very end.

Mostly, I shoot to document things. My "win" is if somebody uses my photo, in an article or whatever. Not coincidentally, I was a yearbook photographer in highschool (and photo editor), and in college I worked for the Alumni Publications Office, shooting assignments they gave me.

And, when an editor is picking from my photos and putting them into an article, it's much better for me to give them some room for cropping to fit their page. Artistically, it's the page as a whole that needs to be optimized, not just my photo, and what works best for that article and that page layout may not be what I saw most strongly in the subject. (Plus of course there are other people involved, the editor may simply have different preferences from me.)

Like, probably, most of us, I do snapshots (personal documentation) and documentary (documentation that might possibly be of interest to somebody I'm not closely related to) and art (whatever that is :-) ). But my "home" is documentation/snapshots (which are the same thing except for the size and diversity of the audience). I suspect most of us do some of each, but the ratios vary a lot (and no doubt a few never ever touch one or the other extreme).

Some of the more purist / one-true-way approaches sound really counter-productive if I want somebody to voluntarily use my photos in their book / article / web page. And no doubt my concern for the artistic choices of others sounds weak or something to those with a single-minded commitment to their own unique artistic vision.

We need to remember in these discussions the wide range of ways and reasons we photograph.

[Mikal W. Grass]

Might be time for a very used Mamiya 6.

[David Stone]

I've shot both 6x6 and 35mm for most of my photographic life, and adapted to each. Now most of my work is done on Nikons with 3:2. However...I have a Canon Powershot as my always with me pocket camera, and I have taped off the viewfinder to give me the beloved square format view which I then crop firmly in post. Best of both worlds.

[Paul Moore]

I love the 3:2 ratio and although I'm not taking you too seriously, it does bug me a little when people refer to it as "pedestrian." That type of classification is illogical. These days it would make more sense to label the 4:3 ratio as pedestrian, considering that everybody and your mom shoots that ratio with their digital point and shoot.

[Paris]

Wow, Kirk, the woman with the goggles is one of my favorite portraits ever.

It's Photoshopped, right? Nobody really has eyes like that. (g)

[Stuart James]

Such a great read, reminds me how much I absolutely loved my Hasselblad 503CW ... maybe I should look back at digging it out of the garage!