do all canon point and shoots ONLY allow 4:3 on several settings?

AlbertInFrance wrote:

hifly wrote:

I always shoot on maximum resolution and then crop.

Same here. Most P&S cameras have a sensor that is 3:4 in shape. That's its native format. If you decide to shoot 2:3, or any other format, you are throwing away pixels.

If you shoot raw + JPEG then the raw will always have the full sensor's worth of pixels so you can use it if you need to, even if its accompanying raw was cropped in camera.

I agree here as well.

"Premature" cropping (in camera, by setting an aspect ratio other then camera`s native, as described above) makes it impossible to regain lost pixels/scene at later time, where it`s always possible to crop the picture a bit differently at later time, making it the desired aspect ratio, without risking to cut out some important part of it.

For example, I shoot 3:2 with G7 X all the time (its native sensor format), yet for portraits I usually tend to crop them to 4:3 in post-processing (which is more natural for this type of photography). Yet, sometimes I leave the picture at 3:2 not to cut out some important part of the scene - something I wouldn`t be able to do if I took a shoot at 4:3 in the first place.

With S120 I shoot at 4:3 as that`s its native sensor format.

Of course, I understand that different people have different preferences, so if someone deliberately wants to use a smaller portion of the sensor (and catch smaller portion of the scene) by choosing a non-native aspect ratio, the camera setting is there to allow it, no problems there (except maybe for some scene modes where a specific aspect ratio isn`t available).