Multi-Aspect Ratio? Why Not Use the Whole Sensor For Every Shot?

[TomHeaven]

What is the benefit of the relatively new multi-aspect ratio cameras?

Why not use the whole sensor for every shot? Or at least allow that as an option?

Why throw away available pixels?

If the whole sensor was used, the ability to superimpose crop lines or maybe just the corner marks for some various ratios on an electronic viewfinder, might be useful in some circumstances, if a photographer wanted to visualize cropping ideas.

 

[Lee Jay]

What is the benefit of the relatively new multi-aspect ratio cameras?

It's good for those photographers who are also clairvoyant and know in advance what they or their customers will prefer for print sizes later.

Why not use the whole sensor for every shot?

Some people enjoy throwing away information. This approach makes such people happy.

Why throw away available pixels?

Well, at least they don't litter.

Some people have the bizarre and mistaken impression that the "image circle" is a hard-edged circle of defined size for every lens designed for a particular lens mount, that said hard-edge is precisely at the radius defined for the corner of that format, and therefore this approach gives such folks the mistaken impression that they are making the best use of the available image circle by throwing away otherwise-useful information.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[studioso]

Lol to your remark on 'some people like to throw away'...

Some people have no idea what they are doing. Well they havent read the directions that came with their camera and are still wondering what happens if they do this... lets see...whoops there's all your pixels on the ground in front of you.

It'd make a good cartoon for watching.

 

[520man]

I can imagining it would be useful under a couple of situations....

If you're looking at a scene and decide you want 16:9 for instance, the camera may change the viewfinder so your framing is accurate.

Also, if you're shooting a sequence for time lapse. I have an intervalometer and maybe I want to shoot 100 photos from the same spot, camera on a tripod; the difference in file sizes times 100 shots would add up. Going back and cropping individually later would be time consuming.

--
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Dave

 

[Simon Zeev]

Most people doesn't PP the pictures. Using multi-aspect is the only way for them to crop.

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Simon = family name so... call me Zeev!
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[McGraw]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

 

[godfrog]

While I agree that the option to use the whole sensor should be available, keep in mind that the image circle of the lens might not cover the entire sensor (or have heavy vignetting).

The ideal multi-aspect ratio sensor is a square with sides as big as the diagonal of the image circle. From this you could crop several different formats, including portrait orientation formats, but using the entire sensor would give you a round image on a black background.

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[Barrie Davis]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

Please tell me....

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal? Only, 16:9 verticals look pretty silly on a 16:9 TV screen because of the huge waste of image area....

.... and I have not yet seen a television set that could rotate 90° to upright orientation like some word-processing monitors used to.... [??]

Thank you.
--
Regards,
Baz

"Ahh... But the thing is, they were not just ORDINARY time travellers!"

 

[GURL]

Imagine an embedded preprocessor where you could not only pre-crop an image but pre-adjust contrast and brightness using Pre-levels, Pre-curves and even Pre-Shadows / Highlights, etc...
--
Georges Urbain René Lagarde

 

[Barrie Davis]

Why throw away available pixels?

Well, could be because they have the bits of the scene that're not wanted on them!!
--
Regards,
Baz

"Ahh... But the thing is, they were not just ORDINARY time travellers!"

 

[jrtrent]

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal?

Not speaking for McGraw, but MOST of my pictures for a couple decades now have been either square (slides from a TLR) or horizontal (slides from an SLR, along with 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 ratio digital pictures). When shooting primarily 35mm slides, I found that I enjoyed my pictures more when filling up all or most of the exposed screen; shooting horizontally and pulling open the projection screen just far enough to allow all of the image to fit was more satisfying than exposing the entire square screen area and seeing blank space above and below the image for horizontals and to the left and right for verticals. For me, the compositional limitation of going all-horizontal is more than made up for by the viewing pleasure of filling the screen. I still find myself shooting a vertical now and then, but am usually disappointed by the viewing experience.

 

[Barrie Davis]

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal?

Not speaking for McGraw, but MOST of my pictures for a couple decades now have been either square (slides from a TLR) or horizontal (slides from an SLR, along with 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 ratio digital pictures). When shooting primarily 35mm slides, I found that I enjoyed my pictures more when filling up all or most of the exposed screen; shooting horizontally and pulling open the projection screen just far enough to allow all of the image to fit was more satisfying than exposing the entire square screen area and seeing blank space above and below the image for horizontals and to the left and right for verticals. For me, the compositional limitation of going all-horizontal is more than made up for by the viewing pleasure of filling the screen. I still find myself shooting a vertical now and then, but am usually disappointed by the viewing experience.

That's most interesting, thanks.

It happens that in the commercial world, most pictures are vertically orientated.
Stuff I do for myself is approximately a 50/50.
--
Regards,
Baz

"Ahh... But the thing is, they were not just ORDINARY time travellers!"

 

[Habemus_Canon]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

Please tell me....

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal? Only, 16:9 verticals look pretty silly on a 16:9 TV screen because of the huge waste of image area....

.... and I have not yet seen a television set that could rotate 90° to upright orientation like some word-processing monitors used to.... [??]

Hollywood and the TV industry all shoot 100% horizontal framing with no complaints. When was the last time you went to a movie that had vertical orientation? OMNIMAX is the closest and even it is composed horizontally on IMAX cameras.

 

[Lee Jay]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

Please tell me....

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal? Only, 16:9 verticals look pretty silly on a 16:9 TV screen because of the huge waste of image area....

.... and I have not yet seen a television set that could rotate 90° to upright orientation like some word-processing monitors used to.... [??]

Hollywood and the TV industry all shoot 100% horizontal framing with no complaints. When was the last time you went to a movie that had vertical orientation? OMNIMAX is the closest and even it is composed horizontally on IMAX cameras.

Only one of the many differences between shooting stills and shooting motion.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Barrie Davis]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

Please tell me....

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal? Only, 16:9 verticals look pretty silly on a 16:9 TV screen because of the huge waste of image area....

.... and I have not yet seen a television set that could rotate 90° to upright orientation like some word-processing monitors used to.... [??]

Hollywood and the TV industry all shoot 100% horizontal framing with no complaints.

So, by specifically referring to 'verticals' it should have been more than clear that I was NOT talking about movies, shouldn't it?
--
Regards,
Baz

"Ahh... But the thing is, they were not just ORDINARY time travellers!"

 

[Habemus_Canon]

I use 16:9 on my compact when I know I'll only be showing the pictures to family on a TV or using the pics for wallpaper

Please tell me....

Does that mean ALL your pictures are horizontal? Only, 16:9 verticals look pretty silly on a 16:9 TV screen because of the huge waste of image area....

.... and I have not yet seen a television set that could rotate 90° to upright orientation like some word-processing monitors used to.... [??]

Hollywood and the TV industry all shoot 100% horizontal framing with no complaints.

So, by specifically referring to 'verticals' it should have been more than clear that I was NOT talking about movies, shouldn't it?

The implication was that one cannot have proper framing by only shooting horizontals. I pointed out that Hollywood manages excellent framing while restricted to 100% horizontals. So if you are shooting for an HDTV slide show, keeping to horizontal framing at 16:9 is not very much a limitation on the quality of your pictures at all.

 

[Barrie Davis]

So, by specifically referring to 'verticals' it should have been more than clear that I was NOT talking about movies, shouldn't it?

The implication was that one cannot have proper framing by only shooting horizontals.

Well, obviously! The pictures that look fine as wide horizontals will look FINE as wide horizontals... (doh!)

My concern was that those subjects which would look BETTER framed as verticals will look pretty poor if they are squeezed into a notably wide horizontal format. And if they ARE framed as verticals, particularly 16:9 ones, they'll still look pretty silly on a wide horizontal screen because most of it will be empty... (shrugs)

I pointed out that Hollywood manages excellent framing while restricted to 100% horizontals. So if you are shooting for an HDTV slide show, keeping to horizontal framing at 16:9 is not very much a limitation on the quality of your pictures at all....

... except that they are ALL obliged to be horizontals, which is compositionally rather limiting for stills photography, even if the movie industry is stuck with it....[?]

I mean, that's why I was asking... (shrugs again)...

....(although, come to think of it, I have seen movie presentations that were not so limited.)
--
Regards,
Baz

"Ahh... But the thing is, they were not just ORDINARY time travellers!"

 

[Marty4650]

Or.... at least as much as you physically can considering the aspect ratio you selected.

Let me try to explain it this way.

My Olympus E30 has a 4:3 sensor. Among other things, this means the sensor itself is shaped in a 4:3 aspect ratio. So if I use any other aspect ratio setting, my camera is cropping the sensor to achieve the result I want.

The ONLY WAY I can get a 12 MP image from this 12MP sensor is to shoot in 4:3 aspect ration. If I select 3:2, 16:9, or 1:1, then I will get something less.

And the exact same thing will happen if I shoot everything in 4:3, and then crop it later in Photoshop to 3:2, 16:9, or 1:1. There are only so many pixels that will fit inside boxes that have different shapes.

Here is what happens to a 3:2 sensor when you select a different aspect ratio:



There is one big exception to this. Some cameras have over sized sensors so they can accomplish different aspect ratios with the same size resolution. You can actually get 12MP images from all three sizes (4:3, 3:2, and 16:9) if you start out with a 14MP sensor that is shaped properly to do it.
--
Marty
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132
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my blog: http://marty4650.blogspot.com/
Olympus E-30
Olympus E-P1

 

[timiano]

What is the benefit of the relatively new multi-aspect ratio cameras?

Why not use the whole sensor for every shot? Or at least allow that as an option?

Why throw away available pixels?

If the whole sensor was used, the ability to superimpose crop lines or maybe just the corner marks for some various ratios on an electronic viewfinder, might be useful in some circumstances, if a photographer wanted to visualize cropping ideas.

Then the reason they don't use the whole sensor, is the projected image circle. If they were to us the whole sensor where the circle is projected, you would have an image with rounded corners.

Look here:

 

[Lee Jay]

Then the reason they don't use the whole sensor, is the projected image circle. If they were to us the whole sensor where the circle is projected, you would have an image with rounded corners.

As I said in the second post in this thread, that is almost always an oversimplification to the point of being just flat wrong. Very few lenses perform that way with a hard-edged vignette exactly at the radius of the corner for the defined format.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)