2:35:1 aspect ratio photographs

indybones

indybones

Well-known member
Hi guys could do with a bit of help here please.

I'm creating some cinematic photographs and I'm wanting to specifically use a 2:35:1 aspect ratio (am I right in thinking this is the typical aspect ratio for cinema widescreen?)

I am having to stitch photographs together to produce a wide enough image, that ok, but I'm getting a bit confused with dimensions, cm's, mm's and ratios.

I have a train of thought here and it may be completely wrong, but if the ratio is 2:35:1 and I just continued to double that up ie

2:35:1
4:7:2
7:05:3
9:4:4
11:75:5

Will I eventually arrive at a number that can be used for a large enough photograph, what I mean is that if I were to use 2:35:1 in cm's then that would obviously be far to small but an 11:75:5 in cm's could almost be used.

Or have I just got this completely wrong?

Hope all that makes sense.

And thanks for your help.

Indy
 
Isn't the double of 2.35:1 4.7:1? It's a ratio I doubt doubling anything will give a different result.

You can have a scope (2.35:1) frame at dv resolution, hd resolution, 4k resolution.

Doubling the ratio won't affect anything, it's just the width to height.

Dunno if I understand your question... 2.35:1 is not centimeters or any unit for that matter, its a rate, a proportion.

I do the same, if I take photos I compose at 2.4:1 which is pretty close. but that's just the shape of my rectangular crop at whatever size.

I think your size in print has to do with your resolution and format, more than the ratio you compose in.

That said, photos nice and wide look great.
 
Hi Greymog and thanks for your help :dankk2:

so say for instance I had an image that was

322.19 cm (w) X 90.42 cm (h) and 72 (res)

How would I go about making those dimensions the equivalent (in ratio) to a 2:35:1?
At the moment it looks far to wide.

What I'm trying to do is to get the width and the height directly corresponding and referencing the 2:35:1 ratio whatever those measurements end up being.

Thanks :thumbup:

indy
 
That image is now a 3.56:1 because 322.19 / 90.42 = 3.56.

So you need crop quite a bit off the sides and keep the height as it is now.

You will need to cut its with down to 212.49cm because 90.42 x 2.35 = 212.49.
 
Exactly as Roberto said.

Make your width the determinant before you shoot. In this case you had to crop from the sides, in most cases that can sacrifice more than cropping header/footer (in most cases, its how you compose).
 
indybones, there seems to be an error in your writing of the aspect ratio. it's two numbers, not three. 2.35 to 1 is the ratio of width to height. so the width is always 2.35 times longer than the height, represented by the numeral 1.
 
Widescreen cinema or Scope is 2.40:1 (technically 2.39:1). The 2.35:1 was called CinemaScope which isn't used really anymore.

When I'm shooting for scope on my Red One in 4k it actually captures each frame at 2:1 but places the scope aspect ratio overlay in the viewfinder so I can compose for actual scope and then extract the scope footage during conform.

Here for example are some grabs from the actual footage of the feature I'm DPing on at the moment for a local producer.

This is the footage conformed to scope at 2.39:1

CowLocationScope.jpg


valley_of_promises_scope.jpg


snurdo_flats_scope.jpg


clouds_scope.jpg


cassandra_scope.jpg


and is the format from the camera which is 2:1

wForest_Bobby.jpg


pambeach.jpg


zSheDemon.jpg


An aspect ratio is just that, a ratio. So to find out what the height of an image should be just multiply the width by the decimal equivalent of the ratio. In the case of scope that decimal equivalent is .4184

So an image which is 1024 pixels wide would only be about 428 pixels tall.
 
right I'm with you now...

2.40:1 rather than 2.35:1 as 2.35:1 isn't really used.

2.35:1 rather than 2:35:1 ... my bad.:embarasse

USlatin thanks for the explaining the maths :dankk2:


nice one..
thanks all for your help and time with this
:thumbup::dankk2::thumbup:

Indy

Craig you got some nice images there from your RED particularly like the desert road, is that raw straight from cam or has it had post on?
 
Yea. I know you got it now, but just to round it off, in math : is a symbol used to describe a ratio between any two numbers.

I'd go with 2.4 myself as well. That's my favorite. Plus you could use having to crop a little less off such a wide image. :)
 
2.4 crop loses more information than a 2.35:1 crop. As the number on the left goes up, the relative information left after the crop goes down. Even though your image appears to be wider - relatively anyway!

madmen_scope_crops.jpg

Watch Mad Men on AMC and AMCHD Sundays at 8pm.

e
 
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Erik Olson said:
2.4 crop loses more information than a 2.35:1 crop. As the number on the left goes up, the relative information left after the crop goes down. Even though your image appears to be wider - relatively anyway!

e
Click to expand...

Not in his case. His image is far wider than a 2.4:1 so he is only cropping off the sides. You are talking about cropping from a camera's 16:9 or 4:3, he is talking about a specific panorama from stitched photos.
 
Unless I'm mistaken, he doesn't want to stitch photos together, but I might misunderstand his first post. End note to USLatin.

The way it is done (in most instances) in modern cinematography is through a cropping of a larger image which has been taken through a larger (more square-shaped) aperture. Less wasteful is three-perf cinematography (and two-perf to a lesser utilized extent), which does not effectively ignore the celluloid / emulsion above and below the Scope ratio frame.

Another way to achieve widescreen ratios (of varying sizes) is to anamorphically squeeze the wider image into the relatively square aperture. This retains more information than using a cropping method, but must be unsqueezed in an NLE or printed (throughout the post-process) and then presented with an anamorphic "unsqueezing" lens during projection.

e
 
Indeed. But the math applies irregardless of what you begin with and I meant to keep things simple by using his example.

In the digital world you are bound to start off with a 16:9 so you crop in from top and bottom. Other cameras like Red One offer the ability to record in various ratios like 2:1, which is even closer and lets you record less unwanted image, saving post resources and hard drive space. They announced that they will soon move to a sensor that will actually be 2.33:1 native, which will be even more efficient for 2.4:1. But their full frame and 645 cameras will allow for a myriad of ratios to be selected, all in camera.
 
BTW, in Photoshop, go up to the selection toolbox, click the square dotted "Rectangle Marquee" select tool and then go to the "Marquee Options" tab for that. Choose "Constrained Aspect Ratio" and put in whatever ratio you like. Then you'll be able to very quickly create crops of stills to a repeatable AR of any dimension, regardless (somewhat) of the size your original image.

e
 
Well, yes. Certainly as we get into 4k and 5k acquisition, you can hunt around within that larger aperture / raster for whatever data you want. In practice, you could select any 2.35:1 section of that larger image for use in a SD or HD project and have room to spare on all sides. You don't want to go lower than the eventual project resolution though.

As an example, I've routinely done this with HD 1920 x 1080 source footage for web projects that will never exist outside of a 320 x 240 realm. Sometimes, you can do this to add a bit of animation stand motion to an otherwise entirely static shot.

These practices are a bit dangerous if you are called to provide the finished product for any exhibition beyond the web, but if it is web-only, you could pick any aspect ratio and exhibit it. 3:1 ... whatever you want.

e
 
Unless the bitrate doesn't adjust with the selection of a different ratio. With a fixed bit rate you would gain quality if you could select the smallest image that will fit your intended finishing ratio. i.e: 2:1 in Red build 20 for 2.4:1 finish.

And if you shoot 1920 x 1080 it isn't dangerous to re-frame so long as you crop in whole pixels to prevent interpolation. Panning would introduce interpolation, especially slow pans. However if you are going to web or even SD you would hardly if at all notice it.
 
Erik Olson said:
BTW, in Photoshop, go up to the selection toolbox, click the square dotted "Rectangle Marquee" select tool and then go to the "Marquee Options" tab for that. Choose "Constrained Aspect Ratio" and put in whatever ratio you like. Then you'll be able to very quickly create crops of stills to a repeatable AR of any dimension, regardless (somewhat) of the size your original image.

e
Click to expand...



Thanks Erik that's a new tip on photoshop I've never used before, nice and quick :dankk2:
 
ooo I have another question but this maybe a bit harder, sorry for being rather anal about these dimensions and the exactness BTW.

Say I have cropped the photograph to a 2.40:1 ratio, then I want to put the black bars on the top and the bottom of the image, is there a mathematical way of working out how I increase the canvas size, is there a specific measurement from the top of the image to the top of the black bar and conversely the measurement from the bottom of the image to the bottom of the black bar (both would be equal I guess).

I mean I know you can increase it to whatever you want but I'm just wondering if there is a specific measurement that is usually displayed, as there is a specific measurement to the 2.40:1 ratio.


Thanks again for your time and help its very much appreciated.

Indy
 
indybones said:
Thanks Erik that's a new tip on photoshop I've never used before, nice and quick :dankk2:
Click to expand...
Yes, me neither, thank you. I didn't know you could constrain the ratio.

indybones said:
ooo I have another question but this maybe a bit harder, sorry for being rather anal about these dimensions and the exactness BTW.

Say I have cropped the photograph to a 2.40:1 ratio, then I want to put the black bars on the top and the bottom of the image, is there a mathematical way of working out how I increase the canvas size, is there a specific measurement from the top of the image to the top of the black bar and conversely the measurement from the bottom of the image to the bottom of the black bar (both would be equal I guess).

I mean I know you can increase it to whatever you want but I'm just wondering if there is a specific measurement that is usually displayed, as there is a specific measurement to the 2.40:1 ratio.


Thanks again for your time and help its very much appreciated.

Indy
Click to expand...

Take your 2.4:1 and figure out what vertical size would make it a 16:9 to give it the exact look of it being on a TV. I am not sure what is the ratio of the average theater screen if that is what you are going for.

So say your 2.4:1 image is 1920 x 800, then you'd do (9 x 1920) / 16 = 1080. Then make your canvas 1080 vertical and drop in a black background.
 
Hi USlatin

ok so am I right in thinking this ...

I've done the fixed aspect ratio in photoshop 2.4:1 which crops/produces an image of 3906 X 1625 (pixels)

I multiply 9 by 3906 then divide by 16 = 2197
then divide 2197 by 2 (one for the top the other for the bottom) =1098

Increasing the canvas size by 2197 in total

Hope that makes sense, hope I got that right..lol..

Thanks again

Indy
 
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