Sometimes you have to see it in a broader perspective
Retro//Reflection - Issue #33
Once or twice per month I send out a letter with a handful of (my) photographs and share a bit of insight on the ‘why?’ or ‘how?’. As an enthusiastic photographer, anything goes.
Maybe you’ll learn something?
Or perhaps it will spark some inspiration?
If I have to believe my YouTube feed, it seems that the latest craze is digging up a late 90s film format and sell it as the next best thing you can do for your photography. I’m partly joking of course, but I have to admit: I do quite like this format!
I’m talking about the letterbox format or the 65:24 ratio but maybe even better known a the XPan crop.
I’m not going to bother you with technical details (you can find them elsewhere, like here and here), but as far as I understand - I’m no film shooter - the format is basically two 35mm frames side by side. It’s wider than 16:9 widescreen but a little less than a 3:1 aspect ratio. Fujifilm and Hasselblad developed camera’s with this format and called them Hasselblad XPan (or Fujifilm TX).
After watching videos and reading up on this format, I went into my digital catalog and tried it on a couple of photos I thought would suit this format.
And I was quite surprised!
Now I wondered: what is it that makes me like this format?
Although I like the standard 16:9 panoramic format, I often still find it not wide enough. But it took me a while to realize: it’s wide enough already, I just don’t like the top and bottom part of the frame. And that’s exactly what I can do with the XPan crop: chop off the top and bottom.
This also has the side effect that the left and right part of the frame becomes all that more important. If you keep your subject in or near the center, the left and right can act like big bold borders, like this one:
I do like the original 3:2 format of this scene above, but the wildlife observation lookout is a bit lost between big skies, the reed and the boardwalk in the foreground. In the XPan crop it works much better, because I got rid of the sky and the bottom part of the boardwalk (both which where too large in the frame compared to the lookout). Now the main subject is better proportioned, the scene looks more balanced. At least to my eye.
XPan crop in camera?
I’m still figuring out which shots work and which don’t and while doing this there’s one more question that comes to mind: why the heck can’t I set this crop mode in camera?! I’m using a 40 Megapixel Fuji X-T5, but apparently I need to sell a kidney to get this crop mode in a Fuji camera body1.
But I came up with a workaround so that I can at least ‘pre-visualize’ how a scene would fit an XPan crop2. In the X-T5 I can set a 6x4 grid (“Grid 24”). Now with the default 3:2 aspect ratio, the center two rows of the grid approximate the XPan crop.
The actual XPan crop is a bit taller, but that okay (since I capture a full sized frame anyway). I just have to keep an eye on the left and right side to capture everything I want here and crop the top and bottom in post using the 65:24 ratio. For that I have set up a custom crop setting in my editing programs so that cropping is done quickly.
Job done!
So, what are your thoughts about cropping?
Have you ever tried the XPan format?
Or even used the actual real camera?
I’m curious, feel free to share some panoramas!
Worthwhile//Reads
Something to end this issue. Here are three (random) photography-related articles I recently read (on Substack) that I think are worth sharing!
That’s it for this issue. Thank you for showing your interest. Feel free to leave a comment, ask a question or tell me anything else that comes to mind. Appreciate it!
Until next time,
Ronald
ronaldsmeets.info
ps: this article/letter/post is free, because I’m not doing this to make a profit. Also, I don’t like subscriptions at all. However, if you do want to show your support, a coffee always helps me writing and posting here ;-)
I’m aware the Panasonic Lumix S5 has 65:24 ratio in camera, but I’m not going to change systems just because of a frame ratio ;-) And I’m sure there are probably other systems as well that have Xpan-mode in camera …
Because Youtube also tells me that apparently it is also important to pre-visualize the end (crop) result, otherwise how would you know how to frame your composition? (makes sense though)
A wonderful series of photos, Ronald. They are all terrific but I especially love the Sjieke Kraom one. Great tip as well about using a 6x4 grid on a Fuji, to help approximate the final crop 👍🏻
The Xpan crop look really good!