A long time ago, shooting some film formats no longer available (think 620, etc.), I sent my exposed film off and was thrilled with whatever came back. Then I worked my way up to a quality 35 mm rangefinder, I began to think in terms of composition, but still relied on the drug store print service for the final product. Finally, I bought an SLR with interchangeable lenses and began to get serious. In addition to commercial prints, I began shooting slides for competition. Then I realized my viewfinder only showed 94% of the scene recorded on film! Disaster!
So someone pointed me towards Gepe (or is it GEPE?) slide mounts, and everything was beautiful. I was able for the first time to do my own cropping (within very tight limits). What a revelation! So I got into printing my own. Wow, look what I can do. Then I began shooting for others, which meant I had to pay a whole lot more attention to standard print sizes. Do you have any idea the problems created when you photograph a large group filling the frame, and the print size has a different aspect ratio? I shot school photos for a studio one year with a Mamiya RB (6 cm x 7 cm). For the studio production is everything; I mounted guides on the ground glass for the standard print sizes we used. And I shot some stuff with 8 x 10 and 4 x 5 large format cameras. Fantastic for 8 x 10 or 5 x 7 prints, a little less ideal for 5 x 7's.
And I shot sports. Thank heaven for zoom lenses, but a lot of shots were ruined by composing too tight. Or too loose! Then I went digital and I could crop everything in the computer before sending it out. I love that control. And with no film budget, overshoot and over edit. Today, I am again mostly shooting for myself, and I have enough pixels to allow me more latitude in cropping, and I use it. Shooting a landscape, allowing for possible changes in print dimensions, I compose pretty tight. Same for portraits under controlled conditions. But for grandchildren at play, I plan for more cropping in the computer.
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