photographer's product with medium format film

[Hellashot]

At one of my niece's wedding 2 months ago, her photographer (30 year's experience) shot it with medium format film. He said he used it because about once per wedding he wants to print a 20x30 and that it did better than a digital image (he has a 20D but a 5D was on order).

This past weekend at her sister's wedding, the proof book from the 1st wedding was there and I was quite surprised at the composition of most of the pictures. For group shots in the church afterwards, he was hardly filling the frame. So much would have to be cropped out to have a decent looking shot. And shots of people at the reception were the same way - most of the frame needing to be cropped out. Even shots he did of different families seemed to be composed for a 2:3 format - filling the family from side to side but top and bottom to be cropped out.

It also seemt that he ended up scanning all his film because he had a few B&W and selective coloring shots. Why shoot a larger format if most of the shot shots would have most of the frame discarded? Can anyone give perspective on why this guy did what he did?

[chris.bailey]

As someone who (until recently) had only ever shot weddings on MF I think I can answer this one. Traditional wedding albums consisted of 10 x 10 or 8 x 10's with oval or square overlays. You needed to allow when shooting for about 1/2 -3/4" on each side for the overlay to overlap and then for the coverage of the oval. There was limited ability to selectively crop so the tendency was to allow some dead space around the subject in each picture. I still find myself doing this on digital. Old habits die hard :-) Even so it was pretty common to have to crop off parts of peoples arms etc as judging the degree of overlay overlap in the VF was pretty difficult.

[solinger]

As someone who (until recently) had only ever shot weddings on MF I think I can answer this one. Traditional wedding albums consisted of 10 x 10 or 8 x 10's with oval or square overlays. You needed to allow when shooting for about 1/2 -3/4" on each side for the overlay to overlap and then for the coverage of the oval. There was limited ability to selectively crop so the tendency was to allow some dead space around the subject in each picture. I still find myself doing this on digital. Old habits die hard :-) Even so it was pretty common to have to crop off parts of peoples arms etc as judging the degree of overlay overlap in the VF was pretty difficult.

It's all about the finished product. I just shot a group that only wants 5x7 prints. I knew it ahead of time and if you look at the 2x3 prints they look like I was drunk when I composed them. After the crop they are fine though.

In general I rarely blow anything up over 8x10 and I print a lot of 4x5's so my framing is usually off when looking at my pictures straight out of the camera.

[karensimmons]

You always leave lots of cropping space in medium format because you dont' rotate the camera when shooting horizontal or vertical (I'm assuming a square format, not a 4x6). It's pretty standard, actually.

karen

[sapearl]

Absolutely correct ;) . I shot square for 30+ years, and it was wonderful not having to worry about "rotation." Portrait or landscape, it was all square to me :lol: .

When I mentally shot "portrait" it was usually a tight top to bottom crop with space at the sides that I knew would be trimmed off. The opposite applied when I shot for an end result that I new would be cropped landscape. - Stu

You always leave lots of cropping space in medium format because you dont' rotate the camera when shooting horizontal or vertical (I'm assuming a square format, not a 4x6). It's pretty standard, actually.

karen