Hi folks,
We had a fantastic day in San Francisco today. We're also here tomorrow and are getting together with some friends in the area, so we will not be on YouTube at all tomorrow.
The weather was perfect and we took lots of photos. Yesterday we taught a
hands-on smartphone photography class on board and one of the tips was about aspect ratios. A particular issue arises with the iPhone that the default aspect ratio is 4:3 when the screen is 16:9. Learn how to fix it in the article below. You will also learn how the Android phones handle aspect ratio. You can also read this article
online here.
What is Aspect Ratio, and How Do You Control It?
Have you ever noticed that photos you take with your iPhone don’t use the full screen? I think it is a waste of space to have those
black bars on the sides. And the same is true if you view the photo on most computer screens.
iPhone camera using the 4:3 aspect ratio
iPhone camera using the 16:9 aspect ratio
That’s because the default ‘aspect ratio’ on the iPhone
camera is 4:3 and the aspect ratio of the phone screen (and most computers) is 16:9. What is ‘aspect ratio?’ It’s just a relationship of width to height. The 4:3 ratio can actually hold more pixels – a higher resolution – than 16:9 (no, that doesn’t make sense to me either), but you can change it.
Open the camera and tap the ^
at the top middle. That opens up a a line of tools at the bottom and you should see 4:3. Tap on 4:3 and change to 16:9. You should immediately see the camera space get bigger. When you take a photo now, the results will be full screen.
However, you’re not done yet. When you leave the camera and come back to it later, you will probably see that it has reverted to the 4:3 ratio. In order to make it ‘stick’ you
need to change a setting in your main system settings. Settings, Camera, Preserve Settings, Creative Controls. This will preserve the last used aspect ratio or light settings, rather than automatically reset.
Android
Android has the same options, but the default is for 16:9 – at least on my Samsung. If you open the camera and make sure you’re in Photo mode, you can tap the 4-dots – or whatever gets you to settings in the camera – and you should now see 16:9. Tap there and you can change it to 1:1 (square) 4:3 or Full in case your screen is even bigger than 16:9.
Cropping
You can also crop to different aspect ratios after the photo is taken. See this video:
