Excessive cropping with D100 prints

I just started shooting a D100 underwater. I've gotten some great results, but I've been dissapointed by my prints. It seems the camera's image dimensions are far from traditional photo dimensions, forcing a very dramatic crop. I remember reading a few months ago an article that circulated on this forum that praise the E-20 for its use of a sensor that was closer to the dimensions of traditional photos. In this regard I concur, my E-20 didn't force such a dramatic crop. It looks like 10% or more of the camera's resolution is lost at the borders.

Am I doing something wrong?

FYI I'm editing in photoshop but printing using my Mac in Classic mode to enable borderless printing on my 1280 printer. I use Epson's film factory to handle the prints.

Anyone who has ever tried to get enlargements from film has quickly figured out that the 2:3 aspect ratio corresponds to an 8x12 print, not an 8x10. Odd that while 4x6 prints are the standard for snapshots now, the standard size for the most popular enlargement would have a different aspect ratio than the standard film rectangle, but that's how it is. As you imply, the Olympus 3:4 ratio is a bit closer -- for the prints I pin up in my office, I usually go with 7.5x10 on 8.5x11" paper. I get a nice 1/2" white border around the page and don't have to crop at all. Of course, if I were to frame them in a standard frame, I would have to have to do a bit of cropping as 3:4 works out to 8x10.67. If you can find it, you might try printing 8x12 onto legal size photo paper (8.5x14), then choppin goff the border. A4 paper (8.25x11.75) would also be an improvement if you could go edge-to-edge on it. If the 1280 can handle rolls, you could get a big roll of paper and just chop it off the roll when you're done printing . . .

Mike

Hi Kasey,

Your D100 should record images at the traditional 3:2 film aspect ratio. A 6 megapixel JPEG should come out at roughtly 3,000 x 2,000 pixels If not then there is a problem with your sensor.

The sensor in the E20 does NOT record images at the traditional 3:2 aspect ratio so you will need to learn to adapt BACK to film dimensions... Think of it this way, the D100 takes the "right sized" photo whereas the E20 cuts off the edges...

You didn't say what type of media you are trying to print onto or what printing program you are using. That could be your problem.

You should try printing onto 4 x 6 stock and see how much is cropped when you try to do a borderless print. My Canon S900 crops a tiny bit off at each edge in order to do borderless, but it's only like 1 millimeter.

Cheers

James

You didn't say what size you were trying to print. The camera has a 1.5:1 ratio which matches up to 4x6 just fine. When I go to 8x10, I've got to crop a lot of width. The common 8x10 size originates with view cameras, which predates the 35mm format. I have a 4x5 view camera, which tranlates quite easily to 8x10.

Now, if that isn't the issue, then you may be experiencing a problem I have also run into. When I size a photo to 8x10 in Photoshop and then print borderless on my Epson 1280, part of the image is cropped. I can't explain why. I have used 9.75" as my long dimension to get a boderless print.

The wierd part about it is that I don't think it is an Epson problem. I have taken files to the lab for 16x20 prints and part of the image gets cropped. I can't figure it out.