Photographic print sizes

Now, when we take photographs we pay attention to composition in the viewfinder, but did you know you should be paying attention to how the image will look in different print sizes that are available?

A lot of cameras today record photographs in roughly a 3:2 ratio. This means that the long side is 1.5 times as long as the short side is. That's the reason 4x6 has become a popular print size today. Now, when we look through a viewfinder it is this size that we see and generally compose our pictures with it. But the ratios are not the same for all standard print sizes and that means you image will be cropped to some extent.

An image at 5x7 or 8x10 size has ratios are different than the 4x6 format print. Now, prints at the 5x7 size have a 3.5:2.5 ratio print size. Note that the long size is 1.4 times as long as the short side is. Photographic prints at the 8x10 size have a 5:4 ratio print size. Here, the long side is 1.25 times as long as the short side is. It's often easier to think in terms of the length multiplication factors instead of the actual ratios of the sides.

If you are shooting images (such as portraits) where enlargements are likely, you need to leave some extra room on the long side of your image so that important items are not cropped out. When you plan for the squarest ratio (the 8x10 print), you should almost always be able to crop a nice image out of your original. Many standard prints are not exact matches to one of these three ratios, but few are below the 8x10 length multiplication factor of 1.25, so shooting for 8x10 format should allow room for nice cropping.

Here are the standard Print Sizes and their length multiplication factors:

• 4x6 - 1.5
• 5x7 - 1.4
• 8x10 - 1.25
• 10x13 - 1.3
• 11x14 - 1.27
• 10x20 - 2
• 16x20 - 1.25
• 20x24 - 1.2
• 20x30 - 1.5

Now, how you have your image processed and printed can be just as important, or more important, than the image. The print is your presentation of your image. Always make sure its a good presentation by understanding your different considerations.

Who will print your photographs is a huge decision to make. The biggest difference between amateur photographers and professional photographers was the labs they used. A professional's negatives and raw images looked little better than an amateur's because of the lab. Labs that offered individualised processing and cropping made the images match the photographer's vision of the image. Some photographers prefer to process their own images so they retain complete control over the creation. Remember, photography processing should not be taken lightly or decided upon quickly.

Composition Basics

A shot in focus is crisp and clear, with good definition of the object in the image. Digital cameras have automatic focus and manual focus settings. Automatic focus allows you to get quick action photographs. Manual focus allows you to determine what you want in focus: background, foreground, usually a person's eyes.

Digital cameras also allow you to fill the frame with the foreground (a bush for example), press the shutter half way (locking the focus), then frame the shot with the background (playground for example) and take the shot. You can make the bush in focus and the playground out of focus in the shot. Note that the reverse is also possible. Try filling the frame with the playground and pressing the shutter release half way, composing the shot to include the bush, and taking the picture. This would allow the background in focus and the bush out of focus in the shot. Keep the focus, stay the same distance from the subject as when you "locked" the focus on the camera.

Camera perspective: Photographs are two-dimensional in most cases. In order to make images more real and alive we try to give the illusion of depth or perspective. Avoid photographing people up against a wall, pull them away from the wall, have them stand with a room or a field behind. Try to light the subject or have them be the brightest object in the scene. If you're shooting a building, shoot it at an angle (from the corner) and have some branches be in the shot - close, yet out of focus.

The foreground is the part of the photo that is closest to the camera - the branches in front of a park scene for example. The background is the part of the photo that is farthest from the camera - the mountains behind a park scene in another example. Note, either can be in focus and thus the point or reason for the shot. Try to avoid shadows across faces by putting light and reflected light on the front of the subject matter.

The depth of field is the portion of the photograph that is in clear sharp focus in the image. How do you judge how much of the picture is sharp? In order to get lots of the photo in focus have lots of light and have the subject farther away. Alternatively, you may want to have a shallow depth of field (only the subjects eyes in focus, for example) then you would decrease the light and move the subject closer.

The image contrast: a lot of variety adds to your photograph's success. Note, the subject should be the lightest area of the screen because our eyes are drawn to light images. Also, the background behind them should be darker than the foreground. By placing the sun behind you will assist you in getting good lighting effects. 

The exposure is the amount of light entering the camera's lens.  An image looks its best with proper light and exposed correctly. Most cameras have automatic exposure settings. Try manually controlling the lights and exposure to get the best images. Fill the screen with the main object, frame carefully to get a tight shot of your subject matter. 

Shooting in subdued light

If you are shooting in subdued light, classic photography method is to select a very low shutter speed (tens of seconds or even more) to reveal the faintest objects in the scene. The conclusion is to take just one long exposure for the image. An alternative way to proceed, however, is to take several short exposures of the same scene and then adding them up with editing software like Photoshop packages. Now, this technique offers a wealth of advantages, leading up to better images and greater creativity for the photographer.

This method of summing up several pictures of the same scene is conceptually simple and easy to carry out. Many people take as many photographs as necessary so that when summing them up, the scene will be lighted as planned. Light from each photo will add to that of the other photos. Adding an appropriate number of such pictures, the photographer can get a final image properly exposed and satisfactory looking. When you want to take a look at a more in-depth description of this method and an example, you can contact us.

Let's look at two macro examples. Now, in the first one, we use the already present natural ambient lighting. With the second example, we provide the main lighting source. With the first case, the proposed method offers several advantages, but, in the second case, the benefits are even more extensive.

Due to thermal noise in CCDs, still digital cameras simply cannot offer arbitrarily long exposure time - the“B” setting does not exist in digital cameras at all. The proposed method overcomes the problem of very long exposure, impossible with digital cameras, even professional versions.

Yet another advantage in using the proposed method is noise reduction effects. At least a part of noise is stochastic, which means that it can add to or subtract from the signal noise. When we sum many noisy images, we make a sort of average, so reducing the noise effect.

Another advantage is we can dismiss faulty images as we want. Some may be blurred by micro-movement of the camera (eg due to the wind) or imperfect in other aspects. To give an example, an airplane or a car passing by may leave an unwanted path of light in the image. Now, there could be millions of reasons why an exposure could be faulty or incorrect. However, if we take just one long exposure, we will end up with a useless image. But if we take a lot of them, keeping all of them short, we can dismiss some of the shots when we edit. If the exposure requires some photographer’s actions, like firing sequences of flashes then this is all the more important.

The powerful capabilities of image editing software offer another benefit. For example, we can mask unwanted parts in some of the images. We could avoid saturation of the brightest parts of the image, for example. In this way, the lighting will be more uniform and spread out. We could alternatively do this creatively by dimming some portions of the final image on purpose. In this way, control over the brightness of the single parts of the image is much greater.