FYI ~ square pictures
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 02:32PM 
The secret of the square revealed • click to embiggenOver the past couple months and with alarming frequency quite a few questions have been asked re: how the hell do I make square pictures? So, by popular demand ...
For the past 6 months - since my purchase of an Olympus EP-1 - I have simply set the in-camera picture format to square (6×6) which, as can be seen in the above picture, masks the camera LCD screen to square. Prior to the EP-1, I masked to square the LCD on my Olympus E-3 (or any of my then-current Olympus dslrs) with black masking tape. Although, eventually I stopped doing that because, quite frankly, I no longer needed the cropped LCD view in order to "see" square.
In either case - E-3 or EP-1, I shoot RAW so the camera delivers a full 4/3 image which I then crop to square in PS. When asked if I crop my pictures, I always answer, "No." And that is where the black border comes into play.
As many who come from the good ole days of film know, a black border was obtained by printing a full negative in a filed out negative carrier - the carrier opening was expanded in order to allow some of the clear film edge to print. Amongst other things, a black border was used to indicate that an entire negative was printed, edge-to-edge / uncropped.
I always shoot horizontal full 4/3 frame images. I crop to square by cropping only along the horizontal axis. I never crop along the vertical axis. My pictures are always "full-frame" top to bottom. Always. Therefore, I consider my pictures to be full-frame / uncropped square pictures.
Capisc?
Reader Comments (2)
Now yer talkin. Thanks for that. Very helpful. Could probably adapt that for my tools.
Nice to get ideas. Learning about others' practices can help improve one's own...
Wishing you Gute Besserung, 'Good Convalescence'
Michael
What about vignetting? How do you do that?