Questions re printing of photos

[William]

Thanks for that JM, It has been a problem with most of the Images that I've had printed also this ratio thing , My son and I shoot with a 30D and 50D , So your saying the native print format is 6x4, 8x12, etc , No cropping , We had a heap of images printed @ 6x8, and 10x8 which was the STD sizes that our printer uses , The first run were all cropped, The second run , all the images fitted in the print but had borders top and bottom, Plus then it was a Nightmare for the Framer with all the different sizes , What I'm saying is how do you standardise your images for printing and framing , Sounds like dont crop, Or if you do keep the ratio all the same ? - Bill

[William W]

What I'm saying is how do you standardise your images for printing and framing , Sounds like dont crop, Or if you do keep the ratio all the same ? - Bill

What I do – for digital, I generally "shoot to 5x7", because I print to 5x7 as a standard minimum size for a lot of my bundle work.
So that means I “see through the viewfinder the scene with a sliver cut off the L&R side edges when holding the DSLR in landscape format.”

On my medium format cameras' screens: I have framing grids for 5x4 and 5x7.
You can get framing screens for some DSLRs or mark the interchangeable screen yourself, or just generally shoot a bit wide and allow for various crops later.

I’ve shot a whole sessions, using DSLRs to: square format; and others to Widescreen Format (16:9) – it is just a matter of practice of visualizing the final framing.

WW

[JM Tran]

Thanks for that JM, It has been a problem with most of the Images that I've had printed also this ratio thing , My son and I shoot with a 30D and 50D , So your saying the native print format is 6x4, 8x12, etc , No cropping , We had a heap of images printed @ 6x8, and 10x8 which was the STD sizes that our printer uses , The first run were all cropped, The second run , all the images fitted in the print but had borders top and bottom, Plus then it was a Nightmare for the Framer with all the different sizes , What I'm saying is how do you standardise your images for printing and framing , Sounds like dont crop, Or if you do keep the ratio all the same ? - Bill

No worries William, it is VERY CONFUSING for the average consumer and client to get their heads around all the ratios and numbers I have to admit, lots of complaints from unknowing customers when I was printing stuff at Camera House years ago!

Anyway your 30D and 50D and pretty much all other modern DSLRs print to a native 3:2 ratio - which accommodates print ratios of

6x4
6x8
8x12
12x18
30x20
45x30 (my favourite and most used size at around 114cm x 76cm for clients and myself)
and so on etc

However, with other types of cameras such as the 4/3 formats and compact cameras, they print to a 4:3 ratio, like my old Olympus EP1 Pen in its native ratio, which can print to

5x7
8x10
11x14
16x20
40x30
and so on


For your question, since I mainly use DSLRs for my line of work - I always keep the native ratio of 3:2 standardized for the client to print, even when I crop it in LR it is still cropped to the same ratio. When I use say, a Pentax 645D for work its native ratio is 4:3 so I shoot to that to maximize the amount of details captured instead of cropping to 3:2 - unless the client requested earlier for only 3:2 ratio.

so yeah, hope that helps