Hijacking the thread here, but this made me curious.
How does using the LCD on a digital camera affect the way the average person composes things? Does standing back and peering at a little screen make people less likely to overshoot since the LCD doesn’t fill their field of vision like the scene in a viewfinder? It would seem that one benefit of using the LCD is that you are forced to see the scene more like it is already a photograph - a little rectangular area with boundaries. If there’s an analogy to older technology, I would guess it might compare to the way people used the old waist level viewfinders. Those were generally on very bulky cameras, though. The digital cam allows this method of viewing on very compact cameras, and people seem to prefer it, unless they’re in bright enough sunlight to wash out the LCD screen and make it hard to see (at the current stage of the technology, I wouldn’t buy a digital cam with only an LCD).
BTW, digital seems to be settling on a 3 x 4 aspect ratio, though current models include 2 x 3 and 4 x 5 ratios, and some allow you to switch it.
Some years ago I used to work for Kodak maintaining printers (the machine that projects the negative on to the final print paper). Now, I cannot see any reason why the aspect ratio cannot be maintained. In every case the paper does not start out as a cut sheet but as a roll in which only the width is fixed. The machine is programmed to advance the paper by a given amount which coincides with the part that was exposed. It punches a tiny hole right between the two pictures so later the cutter knows where to cut.
The only reason I can think would be that somehow that specific machine has some physical limitation that would not allow it to go beyond a certain dimension.
A print will never show the total 100% integral entirety of the negative (how’s that for redundancy?) for the simple reason that you need a certain tolerance. If you want to make absolutely certain that you get everything, then in some cases you’d get a strip from outside the exposed frame.
I don’t have any real data one way or the other, but I do know my wife is doing a better framing job with our digital camera (Nikon CoolPix 950, which has both an optical viewfinder and a small LCD screen) than she did with either her 35mm or APS cameras, both of which have only optical viewfinders.
I think she uses the LCD screen mostly, which might explain it. But also, she has been shooting a lot more in the last couple of years (mostly gravestones as part of a genealogy project she is involved in) and the extra practice may be the big reason.
Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if what you say is true. Certainly I get more of a feeling of looking at a picture when looking at the LCD display than when I look through the viewfinder.
I still purposely overshoot a little when using the digital camera, though. Cropping digitally (using something like Photoshop) is even easier than in the darkroom. As long as you shoot in a high enough resolution, you can crop and enlarge even 50% to 100% and still get output with high enough resolution for many things.
I’ve got an old 2 1/4 Yashica TLR that has a waist level viewfinder. Still it great shape and takes great pictures (although I have to admit that because of the convenience of digital and even of the 35mm SLR I don’t use it often anymore). The waist level finder is cool once you get used to it, although hard to see in bright light without a hood (which is a hang to use).
The camera is bigger than my 35mm body only, but actually a little smaller than my 35 with the lens I usually use, a 35-200 zoom. So it’s not all that bulky. But it is a fixed focal length lens, so you have to use the foot zoom :), and doesn’t have the TTL metering, program modes, etc. But a 2 1/4 neg or slide is a joy to print from, and the enlargements can be awesome. This is, of course, why so many pros use medium format.
can’t exactly explain why the ratios of prints never followed the aspect ratio of the neg, but if you are really concerned, just ask your printer to print your photos “full frame.” all the custom places do this and a good deal of consumer-level places can also handle this simple request. basically, you’ll get a smaller photo on an 8x10 print (or whatever your request) and generally a black border will appear around the entire image due to the end of the negative’s frame. some people hate this black border, but in most cases, i love it. some photographers consider this a mark of honor because, well, it is ONE sign of good photography – if you can get the whole picture full-frame, well-composed, wasting no space. others consider it showing-off. nothing wrong with cropping – most photos require cropping, and it’s amazing how much better a photo can be made with a decent crop. but it’s good to get into the habit of shooting tight and cropping within the camera’s viewfinder.
Ok, so I got out a whole box of old negatives. Turns out that whole “film guides mostly larger along one side” is kind of iffy. I measured a few random samples from my newest film camera, which is about 15 years old. Ok, the bottom band is a bit bigger, but it doesn’t really qualify as “mostly” along one side. Maybe a millimeter and a half difference, and on some rolls, none at all.
I dug way down in the box, for pictures from older cameras, and there was more difference. Nearly two millimeters difference. (3.5 and 5.5) Still not as much as it looked like to me, without measuring. Also there was more variation. Looser parts, I guess. That camera was from the fifties, and I used it up into the eighties.
Mea culpa, I spoke out of my ass. But they really do look uneven, at least to me.
Sailor and pulykamell: It’s not that I can’t get the photo printed from MotoPhoto in the same aspect ratio as the original neg; in fact I’ve already done so (well, still trying, actually as the dumbasses keep making mistakes like printing the wrong neg, making color corrections when I specified none be made, neglecting to slip in a cardboard backing so the enlargement gets crumpled, etc - but that is a whole other story. The point is that they’re printing it 8x12). It’s just a pain that I’ll have to get a custom frame and matting - not an expense I was planning on.
As far as why frame makers do this to me, my guess is that RJKUgly is probably right on the money. I recognized the fact that 35mm is by and large an amateur’s format, I just neglected to take it to the next step and realize that most amateurs shoot like, well, amateurs. “The slight extra enlargement and cropping of these [amateurs’] pictures not only doesn’t hurt, but probably helps slightly,” says RJKUgly. Very true. So by forcing a ‘standard’ 35mm enlargement into an aspect ratio whereby some of the picture will be cropped, frame manufacturers are in fact helping the amateur crowd get better looking enlargements!
In fact, I imagine most amateurs never even notice that their enlargements are coming out slightly different (and likely better) than they originally shot them. Heck, I’m a pretty good photog myself and am even starting to make some money off my images, and yet never even noticed the difference in aspect ratios until <pauses to check date on first posting> a week ago.
I suppose my basic problem, all modesty aside, is that I’m shooting with a professional’s eye on an amateur’s medium.
Oh, and Tris, thanks for owning up to your mistake about “film guides [being] mostly larger along one side.” The others were doing a good job of getting on your case, so I didn’t want to jump into the fray as well, but it was good of you to own up to being wrong. There’s far too little of that life in general, and especially little around here!
hold on a sec. 35mm is hardly an amateur’s medium. unless you consider jim nachtwey, robert capa, robert doisneau, henri cartier-bresson, eugene smith, etc, etc, etc, pretty much every press photographer in the world, plus a decent slew of magazine photogs (myself included.) most of national geographic’s assignments are shot on 35mm slide. 95% of sports illustrated is 35mm. i even know a lot of fashion photographers who shoot 35, but this particular segment of the industry still is more favored by medium-format shooters. i’m not really sure where you get the idea 35mm is an amateur’s medium but that is absolutely incorrect.
next time you go shoot, (if color is your medium) take along a roll of fujichrome velvia (50 ISO) film, or fuji provia 100F or some Kodachrome 25 or 64. if you truly have a professional eye, then you should get some damned good results on these films IF you expose absolutely correctly. if you’re gonna err, err on the side of slight underexposure (opposite of the rule for negs.) you will be shocked at how much of a difference slide film makes compared with neg. color is much more contrasty, much more vibrant. images just “pop” out at you. but you have to be really precise with your lighting and exposure. otherwise they will be washed out and dull. you can screw up by maybe, maybe 2/3 of a stop.
and velvia is virtually grainless. you can pretty much enlarge to poster size without being disturbed by grain. (although slide will cost you a fortune to get printed up properly. the only really true-to-the-original printing process is called Ilfochrome aka Cibachrome.)
