Compositionally, why do you use square format?

Trask · Feb 26, 2017

DWThomas said:
Aha! Now I'm in trouble! Thanks, yes I've been using a Javascript some guy had on the web. And after the initial efforts about 10 years ago Ye Olde Photographer has just been cruising on inertia! Actually, of late I have been using polypropylene photo corners to anchor the print so I can not only recycle the frame, but also recycle the mat, for exhibition purposes. (At latest purchase, museum mounting board to make a double mat and a backing piece represents about fifteen $US just for matting. I have a mat cutter and cut my own.)

Ah -- here we go -- Russell Cottrell (Glad he still has that out there.) I've played with a copy of the script trying to set it up to handle my double window mats (and learned I know just enough about such scripts to be dangerous!)

Since about 97% of my framed prints are the same size print and frame, I just keep using the same numbers. I make the reveal on the bottom wider than the sides and top so I can put my signature on the inner mat instead of the print. The script had some checks for conditions where that centering produces weird results and it pops up a recommendation to use equal margins or whatever.

That linked page also shows a graphical method. Note the page also has some weasel words about that's a starting point and one may want to adjust slightly under some conditions. The main theory appears to be having a wider bottom section adds "weight" to the presentation; the print center is slightly above the midpoint of the frame. That is, you probably wouldn't want the top margin narrower than the side margins, but you could just slide a print up and down and see what you like.

I usually print about 10 5/8 inches square on a cut piece from 11x14 paper, trimming about 2.5 inches off the 14 and using it for test strips. The print gets mounted behind a double mat with the inner window about 10 1/4 inches square.

Edit (now that I'm awake ):
I only now realized that you were apparently looking at my PBase galleries, vs APUG. Soaring Arch and Trail Junction are 8x10 prints (contact prints via my 8x10 pinhole camera!). They are in a 14x15 frame and hit one of those conditions where using top and side dimensions equal came into play; e.g., maybe not quite fully optically centered per that method. But as I recall, that script flagged that condition.

Hope that helps.

Thank you, Dave -- the link is very useful, as is your advice. And MultiFormat Shooter, thanks for the video. I do like the "optically centered" look, so I'll be trying this out soon.

Slixtiesix · Feb 27, 2017

1st: Because I like the square. It can lead to very focussed and powerful compositions. 2nd: Because there is no need to turn the camera. You either print square or crop later. 3rd: Because it allows for a lot of film area in still comparably compact cameras.

RalphLambrecht · Feb 27, 2017

DWThomas said:
Like Maris, I pretty much follow the format, and a lot of the stuff I shoot seems to work well in the square. Maybe because I have been doing more of the square lately, I'm actually finding the 3:2 aspect ratio almost too extreme some of the time, especially in a vertical. I would probably like a 6x7 if I found one to suit me (that I could afford!)

+1

guangong · Feb 27, 2017

Flexibility! Sometimes I compose to camera formats (whatever the format happens to be, the only exception is perhaps 45) but perhaps more often I compose in my head and just make sure all I want will be on the film. The exceptions are color slides and movie. Painters don't limit themselves to only three or four canvas proportions so why should photographers? Of course, some formats such as Minox or Minolta 16 offer almost no wiggle room.

Cholentpot · Feb 27, 2017

It looks unique to other formats. And I just plain like it.

harlequin · Feb 27, 2017

I personally use all formats from 35-6x6-67-68-69 and 4x5
I have gravitated to the square depending much on the work I was doing at the time...
While in Las Vegas, shooting multiple weddings at Chapels downtown, the C220-c330 was handy for shooting and framing
the group in, all photos returned from the lab were 5"x5" proof prints, so the square c41 neg, was a natural.

I agree with others here, the compact size, quality optics and the flexibility to crop in a variety of ways or simply "filling the square"
gives the photograph less tension, as opposed to 6.45 or 6x9 (format I would want for landscape work). Got to see Scavullo work for an
hour in the 80's and that black ELM was a workin, amazing covers for Cosmo and Vogue in a variety of final crop sizes, he got a lot out of
that 120 macro lens on the square!

Lastly, in galleries where I have seen some fine art fibre based that just make your jaw drop, printed an 11x11 square on a sheet of 11x14 paper
just seems to make me study the print/photo more in depth....after all when I was growing up all the pictures from the 126 Kodak Camera came in
square prints....must be a preference picked up in my childhood.

Look at some NASA moon photos, the images are sharp, contrasty, capture the scene/setting/mood very well.!

Regardless, go get some film and shoot some pictures that are "Out of this World"

ps> few digital cameras with square format, reason 25 on the list to try it and adopt the square.

Harlequin

Old-N-Feeble · Feb 27, 2017

I usually prefer longer rectangular formats... 2:3, 1:2, 2:5, etc. It's somewhat unusual that I prefer a square image but sometimes it is indeed the best choice. Likewise, I seldom like extremely narrow formats such as 1:3 and wider but those too sometimes are best for certain images. Of course, this is just my preference.

David T T · Feb 28, 2017

Harry Stevens said:
Some nice vintage Kodak round photographs here......
http://www.vintag.es/2012/02/kodak-no1-circular-snapshots.html

Those are wonderful!

David T T · Feb 28, 2017

I have to say, the 4:5 ratio is the way my mind works naturally, but this thread has me thinking! The DaVinci painting in particular has me thinking about square compositions that are very different from what my eye gravitates to. By pure luck, the static cropping lines in my RB viewfinder present a center square as much as horizontal and vertical rectangles...so now I can convert my mild jealousy of the RZ viewfinder into even more RB confirmation bias!

RichardJack · Mar 1, 2017

It's a matter of taste. The square format was always great for record album covers back in the day. I shot weddings in 6x6 before digital and proofed to 5x5" giving my customers the option of cropping or printing 10x10's for their albums. For me, I didn't have to flip the camera for verticals like I do in digital.
Artistically, a square image holds it's own ground. To me, a square is like a natural window to spy on my subject. It's very easy to isolate your subject in the center of a box or hide tiny details away in the corners. Like a rectangle which can come in many proportions, it depends upon the subject. The only sport that I've shot square was basketball because it had natural components in both x & y directions. I find square useful for still life photography, pets, and babies.
I recently went back to shooting 6x6 film because I missed it, the only times that I remember cropping a rectangular negative square was when shooting with a circular fisheye.
just my two cents...

one90guy · Mar 2, 2017

My first medium format camera was 6x6 and just never felt like there was a need for change.

David

miha · Mar 3, 2017

I love shooting square as it crops nicely to 7 x 9½in paper, a very popular European size, practically unknown in the UK or the States.

tessar · Mar 3, 2017

I make CD covers for friends and over the years I've learned to use the square format to goog advantage. Composing in a square has become as natural to me as composing in a rectangle. There are advantages to either format.

cliveh · Mar 3, 2017

The beauty about a square format is that you can rotate it to form different compositions without changing the symmetry.

moto-uno · Mar 4, 2017

^ What does that mean ? Peter

Alan Gales · Mar 4, 2017

cliveh said:
The beauty about a square format is that you can rotate it to form different compositions without changing the symmetry.

That's heavy, man! Been listening to Iron Butterfly lately?

cooltouch · Mar 7, 2017

Sometimes the square is just "right." (Yahsica Mat 124G, Extachrome 100)

Yeah, I could have cropped it, but I like that sky and I didn't want to lose any foreground detail either.

And this one -- it's only possible as a square. Yashica Mat 124G, Tri-X developed in D76.

Neil Poulsen · Mar 11, 2017

I think that the square 2.25x2.25 format gives me the most compositional flexibility. With the right lens choice, it lets me see all that I want in the photograph; yet, I can also visualize what I want to exclude.

That said, I intensely dislike the 35mm format as being over-long and a waste of precious real estate on narrow film. I tend to compose in aspect ratios that are near one.

It may also have something to do with the relatively small ground glass size. I also quite like the 4x5 format and think that I would find it awkward to compose on a 4x4 ground glass. Maybe not, though? I haven't tried it.

Alan Gales · Mar 11, 2017

Neil Poulsen said:
That said, I intensely dislike the 35mm format as being over-long and a waste of precious real estate on narrow film. I tend to compose in aspect ratios that are near one. .

I've always felt this way. I used to shoot 35mm Kodachrome and then print 8x10 Cibachrome prints. I would always lob off the ends when printing. I like composing in the camera and cropping as little as possible. I'm not one of those anti croppers. I just prefer composing with the camera.

I was surprised when digital came out and they kept the "too long" 35mm format. I guess a lot of people like that aspect ratio.

I like 8x10 and 4x5 large format and 6x7 medium format. I also like square and compose that way with a 6x6. I feel that shooting both rectangles and square images help make me more creative. It gets me thinking. It's fun too!

Moopheus · Mar 11, 2017

Alan Gales said:
I was surprised when digital came out and they kept the "too long" 35mm format. I guess a lot of people like that aspect ratio.

Not really. My memory is that very early consumer grade digital cameras were 640x480, not to match 35mm film (and it doesn't, quite), but to match VGA computer inputs. Plenty of digital cameras have other formats. 'Full frame' cameras are partly a convenience for camera makers; Nikon's first digital cameras were basically an F6 with the sensor stuck in where the film goes. Keeping that format means cameras can more easily be backwards-compatible with legacy lenses.

Personally, I want to shape my photo to the subject, not the other way around. And as far as people liking the format, when was the last time you watched a square-format movie or TV show, or read a square-format book or magazine?

ac12 · Mar 11, 2017

Put your thumb and index finger on both hands to make a square/rectangle.
Then look at things around you and move your hands to make different ratio rectangles, one of the ratios will be a square.
Like cropping in the darkroom, you will find that certain scenes look better with certain ratios; be it a rectangle or a square.

Then do the image crop in the darkroom, to match the printed format to the scene, as best shown, with whatever H:V ratio the scene requires.
When mounting on a matt board, you are not stuck with having to print to fit a stock frame. You can make the print in any H:V ratio that you want to, that is appropriate for the scene. It is the matt board that will be fitting the frame.

If you shoot and print a square composition as a rectangle, you have "dead" space on one or 2 sides of the image.
Similarly, if you shoot and print a rectangle composition as a square, you have "dead" space on one or 2 sides of the image.

IMHO, trying to compose to fit the camera frame is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Even with 35mm slides, we could put reflective tape on the side to "crop" the image, to make it a square, or a rectangle of any ratio.

So shoot the scene, with whatever camera you have, be it square or rectangle, and capture the image.
Then do the final crop in the darkroom to whatever format the image requires.

Alan Gales · Mar 11, 2017

Moopheus said:
Not really. My memory is that very early consumer grade digital cameras were 640x480, not to match 35mm film (and it doesn't, quite), but to match VGA computer inputs. Plenty of digital cameras have other formats. 'Full frame' cameras are partly a convenience for camera makers; Nikon's first digital cameras were basically an F6 with the sensor stuck in where the film goes. Keeping that format means cameras can more easily be backwards-compatible with legacy lenses.

Personally, I want to shape my photo to the subject, not the other way around. And as far as people liking the format, when was the last time you watched a square-format movie or TV show, or read a square-format book or magazine?

I know the Nikon D800 series allows you to format square or 4x5 ratio. My Fujifilm X100s allows me to shoot square. I think all digital cameras should allow you to do this but I guess it's more expensive to make the cameras this way or maybe it's just not a popular feature for most photographers.

I enjoy viewing longer images. I even like panoramas. I just don't see that way myself. For a lot of my shooting of static images, I walk around and pre visualize my subject before I even take my camera out of my bag. While doing this pre visualization I see the subject in a more squared off format. It's just how I see. I shot 35mm for many years and I always felt the format too long for how I imagined my final image.

Most people on here will probably agree with you about shaping your photo to the subject. It makes plenty of sense. It's even been written about in books. It just doesn't work well for me. I've filled 35mm frames many times but I really don't like to. I really favor a 4x5 or square ratio because that is the way I pre visualize my image.

cliveh · Mar 11, 2017

As someone who does not like to crop in the darkroom. In the field I would compose a composition to suit the camera I am using. So if I were using a square format I would frame a different composition than if I were using 35mm, if that makes sense.

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 11, 2017

It's simple, and I don't have to think about vertical or horizontal cropping while shooting.
It also makes my tripod situation supremely simple and more rigid. I use a Berlebach wooden tripod, which has a rotating ball head with spirit level. The ball head is for fine adjustments and doesn't fully rotate the ball to tilt a full 90 degrees. This integral ball head sits very low in the tripod hub, which makes it extremely rigid. With a Hasselblad camera that sits very low on the tripod, winds have to be very strong for it to start showing in the negatives, and I like how that works a lot.

It's also nice to have a square negative with enough surface area that I can crop to 645 or whatever format I want, and still have a very high quality print.

To me it's the perfect format, and many days I think about only shooting square format moving forward.

Compositionally, why do you use square format?

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