No picture in this one. Just a dilemma. As you can see, if you are following this at all, I’m mostly scanning medium and large format negatives. Don’t know what that means? Don’t care? Well, why should you. It’s ancient technology.
But here’s the thing. The medium format cameras were mostly square format. There were two that weren’t: the Pentax 67, and the Pentax 645. I have tons of shots from these two rectangle cameras. The view cameras were all 4 x 5 inches, so again, no problem there.
But the Rollei TLR and the Mamiya 6, I did a hell of a lot of shooting with those guys, and both are square.
Most of the time, I did my shooting with the idea that I’d figure out how to crop it to rectangle later. But some of these square shots don’t really need to be cropped. The only reason I do it is to simplify things in the photography store. It’s tough enough offering tons of options for sizing without having to add square to the choice, because you know what’s going to happen. As soon as I do it, I’ll start getting questions about whether I can crop (although they won’t use the word) some of the rectangles to square; and then I’ll have one more set of questions to answer.
As it is, I am often asked if I can print the rectangle prints as square prints. The customer generally doesn’t know what’s involved, i.e. you have to take a bit off from somewhere. (Take a bit off the top please barber).
Anyway – then you get into the matting thing, which is tough enough to keep up with in the sizes I offer. In fact, I swear, if a print is ever damaged in shipping – it is always a print that was matted, because the laws of physics and Fedex say that the longer and flatter a package is, the greater the odds that it will be creased, folded, bumped, or mutilated. Send a print that’s in a 5 x 7 package and you can wrap it around with so much stuffing and cardboard that it could be dropped down the person’s chimney and survive (so long as there was no fire going).
Once you get up to 16 x 20, even with three sheets of cardboard, and another sheet or two outside, and a bit of metal plating inside, one day it is going to be buried beneath a safe in the Fedex truck.
So there you have it. To add square shots or not to add square shots. That is the problem.
For now, I’ll say no. I’ll cut the things so that they’re in the 4×5 ratio and not let anyone know that they’re actually missing part of the photo. Actually, I do that already. Since there are plenty of square medium format shots on the site, and not a one of them is square – well – there you have it. Practicality wins out of artistry.
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