Tag Archives: framing

How to frame in square format film?

The exact image size is 54 x 54 mm, with 12 images on one roll of 120 film. The 2 ¼ x 2 ¼-inch (6 x 6cm) square format established the popularity of the medium-format camera. Many good things can be said about the square format. The photographer has a wide choice in composing the subject and does not need to decide beforehand which way to turn the camera or the film magazine. Picture editors, artists, and graphic production specialists love square prints or square transparencies because this shape gives them full freedom to crop to their specifications. The 12 images from a 120 roll of film fit beautifully on a sheet of 8 x 10-inch paper, and because the camera is always held the same way, all shots will appear the right way up.

Square slides projected onto a square screen always fill the same area on the screen. Since the effectiveness of a visual presentation is destroyed by mixing horizontals and verticals on the screen, square slides make a much stronger and more effective visual presentation. (Pp. 1-2)

Wildi, Ernst. 2000. The Hasselblad manual. Boston: Focal Press.




A Little History




Getting the Most Out of the Lens


Going square

There are four main ways that to explore the square format:



3. Use a cameraphone and convert the photos to square format using an app such as Hipstamatic or Instagr.am.


If your camera only takes rectangular photos you can experiment with the square format by cropping your images in Photoshop. There’s a couple of approaches you could take here. One is to shoot specifically with the purpose of cropping to a square. The other is to go through your old images and see if any of them can be improved by cropping them to a square. I did this and it’s amazing how many of my photos are improved. I see this as part of the simplification process. When you crop from a 35mm frame to a square, you are discarding a third of the photo. The strongest two-thirds are left, and the image is sometimes stronger as a result.

The above photo is an example of that process. An advantage of using a 35mm digital camera is that you can crop your images to a square when you want, but you don’t lose the use of the full 35mm frame. So here, I can use either the rectangular or the square format of the photo, whichever is best for the purpose I have in mind.


In these days of near infinite choice when it comes to aspect ratio (after all, if you use a digital camera it’s easy to crop your images to any dimension you like) why would anyone use the square format?



What it comes down to for most photographers, I’m sure, is that experimenting with the square format is fun. You get to create some good images and the lessons you learn about composition will help you 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 see what I mean, especially if the subject is a landscape. It can be quite hard to fill the frame without leaving empty space at the top or bottom. That’s one 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 square format is what you get when you truncate the rectangle completely.





Design and balance







It’s a similar story with the square format. It’s so easy to crop your images in Photoshop that you don’t need a medium format or square format camera to experiment with the square format. Anyone can try it – all that remains is to enjoy it and create some beautiful images for the rest of us to enjoy.