I have a compulsion...

**Neal Wydra** · 5-Nov-2006, 05:08

Dear Eric,

Why should you bind yourself to the aspect ratio of your camera?

Neal Wydra

**j.e.simmons** · 5-Nov-2006, 05:30

I had forgotten that about Strand. I have drawn a line on my ground glass and have taped my negative holder to make golden mean crops with 4x5 and 2x3.
juan

**Ken Lee** · 5-Nov-2006, 07:48

Originally Posted by Frank Petronio

Paul Strand added a bar to the guts of his 5x7 to make it into a Golden Rectangle camera...

Dunno about the Golden Rectangle. From what I have read and seen, Strand felt that 5x6 was the ideal ratio for portraits, and modified his 5x7 accordingly.

5x6 is less "golden" than 5x7. A true golden ratio would be 5x8, or 4.3 x 7

Here is an example

**Bruce Watson** · 5-Nov-2006, 08:35

Originally Posted by Eric James

...to crop to my film's aspect ratio. (I shoot 24 X 36 mm and 4 by 5 in.)

Is this normal?

Yes, it's normal. Cropping is not a sin. I find that I compose first, setup the camera second, and then crop to meet my composition. The film is just a tool to get me from composition to print.

Interestingly, I find that my sense of composition likes certain aspect ratios better than others. And it changes over time. Right now I'm going through a 2.5:1 phase so I crop the dickens out of a 5x4 negative. Makes me think I should look into a 10x4 camera.

I also like the golden ratio (about 1.618:1) more and more, but at least half of my work is still in the 5:4 (1.25:1) ratio.

It's about how you see. Use the film in a way that supports your vision. If that means cropping, so be it.

**roteague** · 5-Nov-2006, 11:18

I find that I rarely crop my images.

**Brian Ellis** · 5-Nov-2006, 12:13

I often end up cropping, sometimes just a tiny bit to eliminate something that inadvertantly got into an edge, sometimes a lot to better suit what I wanted to accomplish. I find that a lot of time with landscapes the negative ends up including too much unwanted foreground to get the mid and background I want, especially with shorter focal length lenses. I certainly see no reason to take great pride in always fitting every photograph into a predetermined film and paper aspect ratio as a few people seem to do. I got into a fairly heated argument with Michael Smith about that at his workshop. He feels, inexplicably to me, that every last mm of every last negative must be printed, kind of like it's cheating to crop.

**bruce terry** · 5-Nov-2006, 12:23

8x10 contact prints aside, I happily crop to what I think the image should contain - be it LF or 35mm. More often than not I usually end up with a five-by-seven-ish image.

**C. D. Keth** · 5-Nov-2006, 16:30

Originally Posted by roteague

I find that I rarely crop my images.

I'm the same. My profession is in shooting motion pcitures, though, so I think it comes from that. Movies can't be cropped, so I generally don't crop.

**Ken Lee** · 5-Nov-2006, 18:45

At the risk of repeating myself, here is a JPG of one of Paul Strand's more well-known images, a group portrtait of "The Lusetti Family", made in Italy in 1953.

According to the Getty Museum, the print is 4 5/8 x 5 15/16 - apparently a contact print from a 5x6 negative, with a little cropping for the film edge.

I have read that for the majority of his career, Strand shot 8x10 and 5x6 (cropped in-camera from 5x7).

**Brian Ellis** · 5-Nov-2006, 23:30

From an essay by Richard Benson in the book "Paul Strand - Essays on His Life and Work," ISBN 0-89381-441-5:

"Following this period (referring to the period immediately after the 1st WW) Strand adopted two cameras, the 8x10 inch view camera and the 5x7 inch Graflex and he used these two machines, without variation or exception, from roughly 1920 to almost 1960. . . . Another interesting aspect of this body of work is that Strand put a mask on the camera back and the ground glass to alter the format to approximately 5x6 inches, which he felt, like 8x10 inches, to possess the 'right' proportion for a picture. This camera, now a 5x6 rather than a 5x7, used one lens only, a 12 inch Goerz Dagor. . . . As Strand entered old age he continued to use these two cameras but also began to work with a foll-film machine which made a square negative which he usually cropped to the 'right' proportions while enlarging. The enlargements were in the vicinity of 11x14 inches - virtually the same size as his very earliest enlarged platinum prints."