Aspect Ratio: The Reason Standard Frame Sizes Don’t Perfectly Fit Your Digital Photos

​You just returned from an incredible trip in Yosemite with some amazing photos and are ready to print a few of them when you notice that in order to print an 8×10 you have to either cut off part of Yosemite Falls or part of El Capitan. Why? Welcome to the wonderful world of digital photography with your DSLR’s aspect ratio.

The aspect ratio of a photograph is the proportional relationship between two sides of a rectangle; the width divided by the height and then converted to its fraction form. It is usually defined with two numbers separated by a colon instead of slash. For example the aspect ratio of a photo taken at the resolution of 3600 x 2400 pixels. Divide 3600/2400 = 1.5 now convert that to a fraction. Don’t feel bad if you have forgotten this math. I had to text my daughter and ask her how to do it. Math never was my strong subject anyhow. She told me to take the decimal format and put it over 1 and then multiply by 100. At this point it’s just a matter of simplifying, or making it as small as possible using division.

Common aspect ratios