Aspect Ratios - worth reading

Aspect Ratios - I get questions about print sizes and aspect ratios all the time. People tend to struggle with this issue a lot. Today we're going to clear up your questions and give you new insight to print sizes and shapes. Yes different print sizes are different rectangle shapes. You can see from the image below that classic print sizes are all a dissimilar ratio; some are more square, others a longer, narrower rectangle.

Let's first take a look at the aspect ratios of TVs and make the jump to prints from there.

Remember TV before HDTV (High Definition TV)? It was "more square" than what we have now. In fact old TV was a 4:3 aspect ratio, new HDTV s are a 16:9 ratio.

Do you remember watching a wide screen edition of a movie on the old 4:3 TV? Yup you had black bands above and below your image. Like wise if you watch a 4:3 broadcast on a 16:9 TV you get black bands on the sides of your image.

The same principal applies to photography whether the photo is horizontal or vertical.

Way back when film view cameras were invented (the old box with the accordion bellows) someone decided a popular ratio and film size would be 4x5 inches and 8x10 inches. (please understand that many different aspect ratio cameras have been made throughout the centuries. 6x6, 6x7, 6x8, 6x9, 6x12, 6x17, 4x5, 5x7, 8x10, etc. These are just the common ones - never mind the odd sizes from pre '30s cameras.) Prints from these big cameras were often contact prints, so they ended up the same size as the film they were shot on.

Jump ahead a few decades to the invention of the 35mm camera. For some reason instead of using the 4:5 aspect ratio they decided to change it to a 2:3 ratio. If you take the 2:3 ratio and double each side (number) you get 4:6, not the 4:5 of old. And if you take 4:6 and double that you get 8:12, not the 8:10 that is so popular with photo frames. And thus the bane of our problems today.

DSLR cameras are a 2:3 ratio and don't fit the 8x10 ratio without copping. If we look at the image below we can see the relationships of the different ratios to each other. They are color coded when they match shapes. So a 2x3 is the same as 4x6, and 8x12 (all red, even the red line matches up with the diagonal corners). The 4x5 is the same as 8x10 (in green) and the 5x7 (yellow) is in between.

Here we have a full frame image of a couple, the ratio is 2:3 or 4:6 (anytime you double both numbers evenly, the aspect ratio is the same – nor cropping occurs. It's the native ratio of the sensor) If you order a 4x6 print you get the full image.

However, look what happens when we order a 5x7 print – we loose some of the image. Some top, some bottom, or both top and bottom. The yellow part of the image gets cut off due to the different aspect ratio.

It gets worse with a 8x10 print. Here you would loose 2 inches of image if you made a 8x10 print. (can come off the top, bottom, or both top and bottom.) Everything that is in the red part would be cut off, like her hands and part of the flowers.

Or as in this photo, less hands and some of his head.

Every photographer shooting a 35mm camera (digital, film – doesn't matter) has this same issue. We don't agree with it – it just happened when that someone invented the 35mm camera and changed the aspect ratio to 2:3. The kicker is that printing standards stayed in the old ratios, same with off the shelf frames. So this problem cropped up. (bad pun, sorry).

This won't be an issue with every photo. Some photos have enough space to crop out the dissimilar ratios, other closeups like the example above may not.

The answer? Simple, order a 8x12 to get your photos full frame without any cropping. Ask about our custom prints and framing – we'll get the most out of your images.

Because this question and problem comes up so often, I'll be bumping this blog up now and again.

Ciao, from your Winnipeg Wedding Photographer.