Hi

. . . . one cannot tell that the image has been cropped . . . .

A very useful function if when you take the photo you remember to allow for the cropping, to for example 16:9.

I have seen a guy who attached piece of clear perspex/polycarbonate with an etched frame, in 16:9 ratio, to the screen on the back of his camera.

A very neat trick, the only downside was he could not use the viewfinder for taking an image for cropping.

Just for fun this shows how much cropping occurs:

John EB

Hi,

A few months ago, I changed the photo setting in my DSLR to 16:9. Why I didn't think of it before, I will never know. My cell phone is 16:9. I still have thousands of photos (to be treated) that will have to be cropped, assuming that I use them some day.

Hi John CB

. . . . I still have thousands of photos (to be treated) that will have to be cropped . . . .

I now use my video camera for both video and stills for this reason and several others:

• no worries about cropping
   
• have to carry the one camera and lens, my sportscam is also with it, however it so small that is takes up very little room in my video camera bag.
   
• ability to capture both video (Full HD) and take stills (8 MP) at the same time
   
• focussing distance is from 1cm to infinity
   
• optical zoom 35 mm equivalent is 28 - 560 mm
   
• total weight of equipment is considerably lower - including a fluid head travel tripod
• hard drive recording * - up to 250 hrs of video or millions of images - great for those long trips.

* This one is going to be a great loss for me when I come to change the camera - nobody makes one that records to hard drive any more.

I did consider going to a DSLR, however to date I have ruled this out - the weight and bulk is just too much for taking on a plane and when walking.

John EB

Thanks John. I got that message in MEP Premium but not in MEP 2016. I'm guessing at some stage I told it not to display it again. It's a confusing design IMO. Having set it to automatically fill the screen, that's what it should do!

i don't like black areas, and for maybe 90% of landscapes it works out OK. If I find it's cropped something important I just revert. I reckon I'll switch off this auto feature and simply select all to apply the fill screen function.

@John EB: I too am a fan of the 'one lightweight pocketable device'. In my case an iPhone 6S+. Well, occasionally supplemented by an iPad photo or video.

I took up Terry's idea of just the cell phone, but I miss the zoom of my other cameras. My wife abandoned her LG something cell phone after a year (she went Apple) and gave it to me. I haven't figured out how to turn it on yet. It has 4k etc. She took many photos and videos, all of which are still on the cell phone.

Along with remembering to set everything to 16:9, with multiple cameras we have to remember to synchronize the time. I invariably end up with 3 different creation times for the same time and place. I should put a red ribbon on the cameras or something to remember to change the date and time to wherever we are.

I don't like the black areas either, but I opted for the manual method.

I was too cheap to buy the gorilla cell phone small tripod when it was in the store. I need one of those for the next trip.

What I did invest in was a 35,000 mAh lithium battery, mainly for my Surface Pro as it comes with the right plug, but it charges my cell phone and tablet as well. Last year, my cell phone died part way through my one day Munich Oktoberfest stopover, thus no photos or videos of the bus tour.

I'm not sure about setting to 16:9. At 4:3 or similar, don't you get more flexibility? More scope for vertical pans, zooms, cropping, etc?

How many hours I've wasted struggling with photo time syncing issues! Accuracy is important to me for video preparation. I convert all my original photo and video filenames to the form 20170327-123456.jpg (or .mov). Same with my wife's source material. In her case that's from smartphone and Canon camera. EXIF data is primary source of time stamps, and so time-setting on devices is essential. Smartphones now do that automatically, so weak link is her camera. Plus time zone changes.

My preferred solution: once in photo/video taking mode, typically on a trip or holiday, with watch correctly set to local time, take at least one photo of it! Repeat with any other devices. Persuade (eye-rolling) wife to do the same. Never miss a chance to include (working) church clocks etc in landscapes too.

I too have a heavy duty battery charger, mainly to keep my iPhone alive during long walks recording track with GPS.

Hi Terry

. . . . At 4:3 or similar, don't you get more flexibility? . . . .

Depends on how many portrait images you take - me virtually none, however one advantage of 16:9 for portrait mode is tall buildings get more in especially in cities where you may be confined.

If I am really struggling to get a tall building in or are in a very tight space that is when the sportscam comes out, both for video and stills - with a wide angle setting of 120 deg or 170 deg the only thing I have to watch is how much is removed in correcting the fish-eye distortion with closer objects.

This is example at 120deg w/a landscape (have not used in portrait mode yet)

Original image

Corrected for fish-eye

This can then be panned vertically.

John EB

Great correction, John!

Although slim lady with folded arms bottom left might disagree. 😉

Terry,

I noticed your penchant for time. Left the hotel at 8:13 and walked to the X-bridge, arriving at 8:39. I now just settle for the day, unless timing was important. Being an engineer, I always like to get things in the correct order, so I have struggled with this trait vs re-ordering events. I usually forget to take a photo of the arrival and place, do it at the end and place it at the beginning, but it was hard to even to that; against my principles. Even photos in a museum I try to get in the order that they were taken. But, it really doesn't matter. What matters (to my wife) is that I get the thing done some day. I do like your method of synchronizing by taken photos of your watch. I now try to remember to use my cell phone to take a photo at different locations when I and my wife are using the video camera and the DSLR, just to be able to pinpoint where we were.

I was getting back into doing the video of our 2011 trip to France the other day. We went to the Louvre twice over a couple of days, and visited other places in between. So what do I do, keep the two Louvre sessions split, or combine them into one visit? That is the problem of sticking with the timeline rather than by event/place. Like you, my vacation videos are usually split by day, which can make things a bit illogical. Titles are by day, so Day 1, arrived at campground A, took photos and video; Day 2 to campground B, but also took photos of campground A before leaving, so they don't fit with my title. I had to go back and move campground A photos taken on day 2 back to day 1 - for about 20 days in one video. I know that the photos were taken on day 2, but no one else does. It seems to be insincere to move photos and video clips around like that, but then, so is adding in photos from Google Streets, photo cosmetic surgery on the old face, and making someone, ah, less slim. So, we call it art.

As for the panning and zooming on a 4:3 photo, with the high resolutions photos that we have, this can also be done quite well on 16:9. The main reason for keeping the camera setting at 16:9 is that most of my photos are framed for that, and I don't have to worry about those that now fill the video screen (the majority).

John EB, have you tried taking panoramic photos of tall buildings and stitching them? I just thought of that and have never tried it. I use Panorama Studio 3 that comes as a separate program with Xara. It does more than 6 photos and usually does a very good job on the 360 degree panoramas of a dozen or more photos. I must try do some portrait mode pan shots.

Hi

. . . . John EB, have you tried taking panoramic photos of tall buildings and stitching them? I just thought of that and have never tried it . . . .

I do this often, also with landscape images when taking them I start and end the sequence with a black image, I cover the lens hood with my hand, so I know which images they are and the stitch them together with either Panorama Stitcher or PaintShop Pro.

Here is an example of 4 portrait images stitched in PSP

John EB