Printing 35mm Full Frame?

[livemoa]

You know what they say about the US and UK: "two peoples, separated by a common language", and sometimes by measurements (although, I still say, we drive on the correct side of the road over here . )

Interesting statistic that I came across a while ago, around 40% of the world drive on the left, the natural side of the road.... lol. Hope this dosen't start a flame war or something ;-)

Though, what my reply has to do with printing full frame 35 mm I don't know

[Claire Senft]

Almost all of my 35mm film is exposed to use the full frame. I take almost 100% of my photos which are landscape, cityscapes, nature and still life with the use of a Majestic 2501 tripod. I am sure that many of you will consider this to be a lot of tripod to lug around for use with a 35mm camera. Be that as it may it has proven itself to be a most satisfactory device. When I compose a photo and circumstances allow me to fill my frame the way I want I make mental note of how the image will be printed and fill my frame with either the left/right or bottom/top fills my viewfinder to the edges...assuming that I cannot fill the frame so that the bottom/top and left/right do not give me the composition I desire. Most of the time the full frame is what I am able to use.

I then print to negative to the maximum size that can be accomodated by the size od the paper. I then use the paper trimmer to get the visualized composition. For example in making prints on 8x10 paper I project the image size as 6-1/2"x9-3/4 ". I most cases this is my trimmed print size. If my intended composition used less than the full left/right portion or had excess top or bottom when I took the photo I trim it down so that it might become for example 6-1/2"x8" or 5-3/8"x9-3/4 inches. I cut myself no slack in doing this because it forces me to be much more careful about my composition. This practice has, in my opinion, improved my composition dramatically because every time I look at one of my prints that has undesirable composition it serves as a very strong reminder to pay attention to what I am doing.

Then again I take handheld photos of my active grandchild and my cropping happens during projection.

[bjorke]

It's all a scam designed to make you waste paper (which you pay for): http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000176.html

Same deal with mattes, unless you cut them yourself (4x6" is the only decent 35mm size that's standardized).

[rbarker]

It's all a scam designed to make you waste paper . . .

Yeah, sorta like model portfolio shots, the standard size for which is 9x12. The agencies demand that size, forcing you to print on 11x14 and trim, just because they can. If the agencies weren't so money-hungry, I'd suspect they were commies. ;-)