Answer 02 of 12
What aspect ratios do the nature scenes come in? – Curated Nature Scenes
Native ratios, what survives a crop to 2.39:1 or 9:16, and why you should plan the crop before choosing the frame.
Every image page lists both the pixel dimensions and the aspect ratio. In wide-format work the ratio is the number that decides whether a frame is usable at all, and it should be the first thing you read.
Native ratios
Most frames here are 3:2. A minority are 16:9, 5:4, or panoramic where the shot was made as a stitch.
None of them are 2.39:1, because almost nothing is photographed at 2.39:1. You will be cropping.
What a crop to 2.39 costs you
Cropping a 3:2 frame to 2.39:1 removes roughly 37 per cent of the height. That is a large amount, and where it comes from decides whether the shot survives.
If the composition is built on a low horizon with a big sky, the crop takes the sky and the picture usually improves. If it is built on a high horizon with foreground detail, the crop takes the foreground and the picture usually collapses.
Look at the frame and ask what the crop removes before you ask whether you like the photograph.
Vertical
Cutting a 3:2 landscape to 9:16 keeps about 28 per cent of the width. This nearly always fails, because a wide landscape is a composition about width.
For vertical formats, look for frames whose subject is genuinely vertical: a waterfall, a tree, a cliff face, a canyon, a shaft of light. They exist in the catalogue and they are tagged, and they are a far better starting point than the best wide shot in the world.
Resolution after the crop
Do the arithmetic on the crop, not the original. A 6000 by 4000 frame cropped to 2.39:1 gives you 6000 by 2510. That is still enough for a 4K deliverable with headroom for a push-in, and not enough for an 8K one.
If you intend to animate a push, you need the surplus resolution the push consumes. A 20 per cent push into a 4K frame needs 4800 pixels of source width before you start.
Plan the move first
For any still that will move, decide the move before you choose the frame. A slow push into a valley needs depth cues at the centre. A lateral pan needs interest across the width. A parallax build needs separable planes: foreground, midground, sky.
Choosing a beautiful frame and then discovering it has one flat plane is the most common way a still fails in motion.