What Is Square Format Digital Camera
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Medium format cameras, toy cameras similar the Holga and Diana, and smartphone apps similar Instagr.am are making the square format more pop than ever. In the digital age, the square format similar film photography, certainly isn't dead.
A Little History
Foursquare format cameras have been around a long time. The starting time one was introduced by Rollei in 1929. The reason that information technology used the square format is probably more to do with the twin lens design than annihilation else – to take a photo you look through a magnifier at a focusing screen on top of the camera. The inconvenience of turning the camera on its side meant that is could really only be used in the upright position. Rollei cameras were used by photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Robert Doisneau. Diane Arbus used a Mamiya twin lens reflex camera. All these photographers used the square format.
Rolleiflex original camera with Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar f/iii.8 75mm lens. Photo by Eugene Ilchenko.
Hasselblad made the 1600F – a square medium format camera – in 1948, and stuck with the foursquare format in their rollfilm cameras upward until the release of their H-Organisation digital cameras in 2002. Hasselblad film cameras had a reputation for quality and were the camera organization of choice for many professional studio photographers upwards until nearly decade ago. One reason for their popularity, autonomously from the quality, was the convenience of the square format. You could take a photo, such every bit a portrait, go out some empty space around it then it could exist cropped later to fit the space for which it was intended.
Getting the Nigh Out of the Lens
At that place's another practical reason that makes the foursquare format attractive. Photographic camera lenses cast a circle of light – chosen an paradigm circle – over the sensor or negative. A rectangular sensor or negative doesn't fill up use of the epitome circle, at that place is always some wasted space. The square format, on the other hand, makes much improve use of the image circumvolve. Strangely, the circle would exist best used by a circular sensor or picture, but to my knowledge i has never been produced.
Going square
There are 4 master ways that to explore the square format:
1. Use a medium format film photographic camera similar a Rolleiflex, Mamiya or Hasselblad. You tin either print the negatives in a darkroom or browse them with a loftier quality flatbed scanner assuasive you can work on them in Photoshop. Many photographers that develop and/or print their ain images work with blackness and white film, which is far easier than color to develop at abode.
2. Utilise a toy film camera similar a Holga or Diana. Again, you can print or scan the images. There are besides some unusual older cameras around that utilise the square format – such as the Robot Star cameras that create a 24mmm by 24mm negative on 35mm film.
3. Employ a cameraphone and convert the photos to square format using an app such every bit Hipstamatic or Instagr.am.
four. Take a photo with digital compact, SLR or medium format camera and crop it to the foursquare format in Photoshop. Some digital cameras let you take square images in Live View fashion.
If your camera just takes rectangular photos you tin can experiment with the square format by cropping your images in Photoshop. There's a couple of approaches you lot could take here. One is to shoot specifically with the purpose of cropping to a foursquare. The other is to go through your sometime images and see if any of them tin can be improved by cropping them to a square. I did this and it'south amazing how many of my photos are improved. I run into this every bit part of the simplification process. When you ingather from a 35mm frame to a square, you are discarding a third of the photo. The strongest 2-thirds are left, and the image is sometimes stronger as a result.
The above photograph is an case of that process. An reward of using a 35mm digital camera is that you can crop your images to a square when y'all desire, just you don't lose the use of the full 35mm frame. So here, I tin can use either the rectangular or the square format of the photo, whichever is best for the purpose I have in mind.
Composition
In these days of near infinite choice when information technology comes to attribute ratio (after all, if yous use a digital camera information technology's easy to crop your images to any dimension you like) why would anyone use the square format?
Ane of the main attractions of the square format is limerick. There is something different about a square – square photos have a certain dazzler to the pattern that rectangular images lack. The viewers heart moves around the image in a circle, rather than from side to side (or up and down). At that place's less wasted space around the subject. Y'all tin place the subject in the eye of the frame and it just looks right.
The square format seems to work best with subjects like portraiture, the nude, landscape, nonetheless life, architecture, details and abstracts. These are all artistic subjects – which is perhaps why the square format is popular with art photographers.
What it comes down to for most photographers, I'thou sure, is that experimenting with the foursquare format is fun. You become to create some practiced images and the lessons you lot acquire about limerick will assistance y'all out when you take photos in rectangular formats.
The 35mm problem
One of the problems posed by the 3:2 aspect ratio of 35mm digital SLRs is the length of the rectangle. Turn your camera on its side to take a vertical image and you'll encounter what I mean, especially if the subject is a mural. It can exist quite hard to fill up the frame without leaving empty space at the top or lesser. That's i reason why photographers use medium format or large format cameras, and why the micro four-thirds format appeals to some photographers. The 'shorter rectangle' is easier to fill. The foursquare format is what you become when y'all truncate the rectangle completely.
This is a good example of a photo that becomes stronger cropped to the square format. The compositional trouble that I had to solve when I took this photo was what to do with all the empty space effectually the statue? My start idea was that it could be quite effective as a framing device. But now I think that there is simply too much empty space around the statue, and that it benefits from cropping to a square. The statue is larger within the frame and the eye can accept in the details of the statue rather than get on a somewhat wasted journeying around the edges of the frame (at that place is nothing interesting to see there).
I'm certain there volition be some people who prefer the original version to the cropped one. That's part of the fun of photography. There are no set up rules, there is commonly more ane way of doing things, and we all take different opinions near the effectiveness of certain techniques or ideas.
Shapes
How many shapes can you see in these images? Whether information technology's circles, squares, rectangles or triangles, the technique of composing using geometric shapes within the square format is very powerful. The square format lends itself meliorate to this type of limerick than any rectangular aspect ratio. Shapes become stronger in black and white photos as there is no lark of color. Shapes are also simple – note the simplicity of blueprint in these images.
Pattern and balance
Unlike a rectangle, a square image has a natural sense of balance. A foursquare is a very solid shape, particularly compared to an upright rectangle – it tin can't autumn over.
Yous may be wondering whether yous should nonetheless etch according to the rule of thirds inside the square format. My advice is – don't. You can throw the dominion of thirds out of the window (probably the best place for it). The rule of thirds is a guideline only, and it's actually no more than a simplification of the principle of the aureate mean (likewise known as the gilded ratio), which but applies when used in a rectangle with an aspect ratio of 1.618:1 (close to the 3:two aspect ratio of the 35mm frame).
In other words, it's a rule designed to be applied within the 35mm frame. Don't endeavour and use it within other formats – you lot'll merely stop up with a result that looks forced or formulaic. Instead, concentrate on the balance within the paradigm. How practice all the elements work together, and with the negative space surrounding them? As the photo to a higher place, and some of the others I've used here show, fundamental compositions work well in the foursquare format.
One of the strengths of the square format is that it'due south quite easy to use the infinite within the frame well. Information technology'south open up to experimentation – you can place the subject in various positions within the frame to discover the nigh effective. Particularly if yous're cropping from a 35mm photograph within Lightroom or Photoshop – yous'll have some leeway to identify the subject within different parts of the frame, and see what works all-time.
Determination
Before digital photography, if you were interested in blackness and white photography you had to exist quite serious well-nigh it to invest in a proper darkroom and the facilities required to make good quality prints. Digital photography has brought black and white photography to the masses by making it available to just near everybody who owns a digital camera.
It's a similar story with the square format. It's so like shooting fish in a barrel to crop your images in Photoshop that you don't need a medium format or square format photographic camera to experiment with the square format. Anyone tin try it – all that remains is to relish information technology and create some beautiful images for the rest of us to enjoy.
Gallery
Just in case you demand some inspiration – hither are some of my favourite square images. Each of these started every bit a rectangular photo that I cropped to a square in Photoshop:
I also like putting images together to create diptyches and triptyches:
Did yous find this mail useful?
Source: https://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/a-guide-to-producing-beautiful-square-format-images--photo-6615
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