Aspect Ratio is VERY important: 3:2; 4:3; 16:9; 9:19.5?! Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

kind of sucks now right aspect ratio is
one of the most important parts of
photography and nobody ever talks about
it it's kind of boring but even if
you're in your first day of shooting
aspect ratio is something you should be
thinking about it's more important to
photographers now than it has ever been
aspect ratio is the ratio of the width
to the height of the picture and back in
the old days maybe you had a
35-millimeter camera and you dropped off
at the film off at the CVS and you just
got 4x6 prints no worry about cropping
at all but then maybe you start to
actually shoot some portraits and
somebody wants an 8 by 10 and this is
what you had to do he then had to shave
an inch off of the short edges and first
time you took a group shot well first
time I took a group shot that meant I
was cutting half of somebody's face off
because I was so used to trying to fill
the frame all the time it was just a
huge mistake I wasn't thinking about the
final aspect ratio of my images and it
screwed me up and then you know what I
got into YouTube and I need to put my
pictures into videos and videos now have
a 16 by 9 aspect ratio which means I'm
now cutting the top and bottom of the
images off like this and if I don't
think about it ahead of time then maybe
I don't have any pictures that I can
show in my video so now when I'm taking
pictures I try to fill the frame and my
35 millimeter poram format in case I
want to make a 4x6 but then I think to
myself oh I need to recompose it in case
I need to shave the edges off for an 8
by 10 oh but I also need to factor in
that I need to shave the top and bottom
off if I want to do a 16 by 9 but we're
not done yet the iPhones now or any
phone I wanted to make a wallpaper the
other day and not only did I need to
find a good vertical shot but I needed
it narrower than 16 by 9 and that
required a completely different
composition and most of my favorite
pictures that I'd want to put on there
didn't work with it so now if I want to
take a picture and be able to use it in
different places I need to be thinking
about square or shortened
long and narrow and there's something
else the world's most popular format for
sharing your photography is Instagram
and you know what the right way to share
pictures on Instagram is Square fixed
one-to-one you know why because you can
put up different types of pictures in
Instagram now but all your thumbnails
are gonna show up as Square and if
you're trying to be popular on a hashtag
people are gonna be judging your
pictures based on a square thumbnail so
I still try to shoot my Instagram
pictures in square and I just showed you
that Eagle picture I didn't share that
picture on Instagram you know why
because it wouldn't have worked square I
picked a completely different picture
for the square Instagram format so what
does this mean it means that every time
you're taking a picture try to fill the
frame with your camera the camera's
natural aspect ratio but also think
about other aspect ratios that you might
want to shoot and imagine how you're
going to have to crop the image imagine
that you need to crop it down to square
or to an 8 by 10 aspect ratio imagine
maybe in the future you want to put it
into a video you also need to think
about future formats that might come up
because right now Instagram is the most
popular format for sharing your pictures
and the square is really popular but you
know how people hold their smartphones
like this so in the future we're
probably going to be sharing more
pictures in a vertical format are you
prepared for the coming future where
pictures are all in vertical format I
know I'm not this is my actual portfolio
and what it looks like on my phone yeah
my first picture is a wide panorama and
I've been shooting wide like this
forever because I've been shooting
mostly either for prints like those on
the wall behind me or for display on
computer screens which were 4 by 3 and
then 16 by 9 but wide wide wide
everything is gonna shift and I might
still actually want to show these
pictures but notice everything is
horizontal so I need to start shooting
my portfolio differently and then what
happens after the phone maybe will strap
on VR headsets and want everything to be
wide and panoramic again if you have a
picture that you want to last into the
future
shoot it in as many aspect
ratios as possible where does this come
from well back in the day portrait
photographers shot with four by five
film which translated to an 8 by 10
aspect ratio perfectly without requiring
and in cropping how convenient for them
right
hence the popularity of the 8 by 10
format but nowadays the most popular
format for censors is 35 millimeter
which is like a 4 by 6 or 8 by 12 aspect
ratio so all of a shooting a 35
millimeter format have to think about
cropping because our forefathers
shooting before by 4-5 film made the 8
by 10 the standard unless you have a
micro 4/3 camera which is natively at
that same 4 by 5 aspect ratio it all
gets pretty complex and what if you're
doing professional photography or
commercial photography or you hope to
then you start to get to deal with
things like magazines and all the things
that the editors want commercials
advertisements they require lots of
different aspect ratios and you might
not know precisely what the designer is
going to use like look at this edge
that's somebody's photo and it's a
circle if you were going to be selling a
stock photo you would have to think
about if the designer decided to use it
as a circle but then there's a picture
right here that's in more of an 8 by 10
aspect ratio that works perfectly but
what go forward a couple of pages and we
have this wide horizontal spread so how
would you take the picture would you
take it horizontally would you take it
vertically would you leave a little bit
of room to crop all of the above right
if there's an important moment and you
aren't sure what the final aspect ratio
is gonna be shoot all the different ways
some cameras have this built-in the
ability to change the aspect ratio they
might blank it out on the viewfinder or
on the back screen other cameras don't
and you might just have to imagine it if
you know that you have to shoot square
for an important project you could take
a piece of tape put it right over the
screen in the back ok one more thing why
does the sensor have to be this one
format of rectangle it doesn't have to
be it could be a rectangle like that and
then it could have a square overlaid on
it in fact it could be vertical - it
could be circular and just capture the
entire image circle and allow you to
to crop later so that no matter what
ratio you decided to go to you weren't
losing a lot of megapixels as people are
choosing more and more different form
factors it's gonna get more and more
important for photographers to be able
to shoot in a wide variety of aspect
ratios hope this was helpful if you like
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