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Square Format

Square is probably my least favorite. I prefer 1:1.5 (35mm & 6x9), 1:1.4 (5x7), 1:1.33 (6x4.5) in that order. Square is just a way to shoot 6x4.5 without turning the camera.
 
As a Rolleiflex user I prefer the square for street and travel photograph. Long rectangle 135 5x7 are ok but 6x7 and 4x5 not my taste.
 
Another example of where square works. This is a rail crossing at a spot called Tower 26 in northeast Houston (Texas). There is no tower any more, but the name remains. It seems to be a popular place for railroad photographers and has access on a public road. Hasselblad 501CM, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, Panatomic-X film, tripod-mounted.

 
Very interesting thread.
I have just one MF Camera........... 6x7, and i have only shot one roll with it.
One thing...of many... that i enjoy about 35mm is the choice of the aspect ratio.
Like many things, no right or wrong.
Sometimes you simply become competent with the tool you have, and see no need to change.
 
I like 6x6 because you can compose square; landscape or portrait rectangular; without rotating the camera (especially with a TLR). When you shoot rectangular the 6x6 becomes 6x4.5ish with extra negative. Shoot now, decide later (though you usually have a format in mind when you shoot, you can always change your mind).
 
Square works best in a very organised competition, something made to fit in a box. You can get a composition to work anyway. Far more tricky to get one that only works in a square.
 
I like square for everything but people. Portraits and group shots often look better in a rectangular format, at least to my eye. The great advantage of square (as others have mentioned) is that you can crop to vertical or horizontal later.
 
Hvesterlos said:
I like square for everything but people. Portraits and group shots often look better in a rectangular format, at least to my eye. The great advantage of square (as others have mentioned) is that you can crop to vertical or horizontal later.
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You can crop 35mm to square.
 
Square is my favorite format. I discovered it by chance when buying a cheap TLR, which then opened the door to a Rolleiflex and a Hasselblad. I can compose "instinctively" for it, something I cannot do with the 3:2 aspect ratio of small format. And man, do I love those terrific medium format slides when projected!

I particularly like the balance and dynamics (or lack thereof) of the square format. Zen was mentioned above: I find photographing square very relaxing. I realized I have 2 kind of photography endeavours: the "relaxing" one, taking my time, alone, with my Rollei or Hasselblad. And the "active" one, usually with my F3 or M6 + one lens, when traveling with my family. This is more about documenting what we do and taking pictures of my loved ones.

Having recently discovered 6x7, I think it has the potential to become another favorite format of mine. Too early to tell, though. I refrained all those years to go into 6x7, as my "infrastructure" - slide projector, enlarger (*), etc. - is all set up for 6x6. Until 2 weeks ago when I found a nice Plaubel Makina 67... what a beauty!

(*) As a matter of fact, my enlarger covers up to 6x9, but I only have a 50 and a 80mm lens. My 80mm might very well cover 6x7, if not all I need is just another lens. I haven't looked into that yet. In any case 6x7 slides is out of the equation at the moment.

EDIT: after writing the above I *had* to double check: yes, my 80mm enlarger lens covers 6x7!
 
CMoore said:
One thing...of many... that i enjoy about 35mm is the choice of the aspect ratio.
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Could you please explain how you mean this? in my understanding, 35mm only has 3:2 ratio (with the exception of a few exotic panoramic cameras perhaps...) In any case nowhere near the choices offered by medium format, 645, 66, 67, 68, 69, 617 etc.
Not nitpicking, just trying to learn something new
 

35mm is not square. what else is there to say.?

There are more choices in MF.? Yes there are.

But i am not shooting MF, i am shooting 35
 

Very good shot!

Cheers.
 
CMoore said:
35mm is not square. what else is there to say.?

There are more choices in MF.? Yes there are.

But i am not shooting MF, i am shooting 35
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The Robot cameras excluded .
I like square frames and square mats and square prints for many things.
And I'm happy to use any of my cameras for that purpose.
For me, I can usually visualize different aspect ratios within the viewfinder, but sometimes its just easier to have the camera do that for you.
 
When I shoot 2:3, I end up cropping, either 4:5 or square. With a high-res digital 2:3 camera, I sometimes crop 6:17.

 
guangong said:
Just because the negative is square does not mean that the print must be square.
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I know, you would think we would just crop it to make a composition the way we want it, right? Photographers are sorta nuts when it comes to cropping, it seems like it's in the "last resort" category. We imagine someone looking at a square photo that was made w/ a 35mm camera and going, pffft, is that the best they can do?

There is no rational reason for not cropping a photo, but it is apparently rarely done. Imagine a painter going into an art store and saying, gimme one of them full frame canvasses, I have just the right idea for it.
 
There is a rational reason for cropping a photo, but it is apparently rarely applied.

An artist should be able to fill any canvas of their choosing -- without others judging the choices, except perhaps on the effectiveness of the images on themselves, the viewers.

Can one actually crop a photograph? Or does one crop the negative instead? Cropping an image still leaves a complete image, granted, a modification of the original image...an image being purely a mental construct. Cropping a photographic print just leaves you with two or more pieces of paper. Fun with words...
 
When I got my first 6x6 TLR I marked the focussing screen to show 4:5 and 5:4 rectangles for horizontal and vertical compositions. Nett result was only square pictures. Why? The square in the viewfinder was powerful enough influence me to reject those compositions that didn't look right square.

Curiously, with other cameras that shoot rectangles I never crop to square. It seems I fall into seeing subject matter according to how the camera I'm carrying sees that same subject matter.
 
Another example where square works (at least for me). This is Pearl Street in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I took this from the railroad tracks, which give a bit of elevation. Fuji 160NS, Hasselblad 501CM, 100 mm ƒ/3.5 Planar CSi lens, tripod-mounted.

 
Much of what I photograph is trains, so for me square is the worst possible format. Pano or an X pan is quite effective.

This is from a 35mm tech pan negative.
 

My sister just gave me a couple of (color) photos that i assume my Mom or Dad took of me and two friends at our house in 1971.
They are square. I do not think my parents had anything but a Kodak "Instamatic" type camera.
Would that have been, maybe, 126.?
110 was not square was it.?
 
Craig said:
Much of what I photograph is trains, so for me square is the worst possible format. Pano or an X pan is quite effective.

This is from a 35mm tech pan negative.
View attachment 328326
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Nice..... Right On.... I dig trains.
I have some nice train photo books from the 40s, 50s and 60s.
 
126.
 
I don't own a panoramic camera, but I will shoot with the panoramic format in mind, cropping in the viewfinder. Same for shooting square with a 35mm camera--or even a 4x5 view camera. You don't always have what you want, but you can get what you need.
 
Sometimes the best composition of a scene is square.
Sometimes it's a rectangle...maybe a short rectangle, maybe a long rectangle.
Why is this so difficult to understand?
 
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