Are HD TV Aspect Ratio Prints Available?

nickphoto123 · May 14, 2007

Hello,

Have a new camera and it can shoot at 16x9 ( HD TV ) format.

I like the composition possibilities of this format.

Can my clients order prints in this 16x9 aspect ration? I could not find any.

If not available, can this size be added to our offerings?

Thank you,

Nicholas

Andy · May 14, 2007

Hello Nicholas,

Here is the full catalog:
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/catalog.mg

Newly added (about a month ago) was 20x10 prints, that's as close as we get to 16x9. Of course, folks can purchase 16:9 prints on any size paper, and choose no-crop (and you can ensure that by setting your galleries to Proof Delay):

http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/ProofDelayForHappyCustomers
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/ProofDelaySolveCroppingWoes

nickphoto123 · May 14, 2007

Hi Andy,

I think the time is coming for 'formal' 16x9 print aspect ratio prints of varying physical sizes.

Hopefully your printer realizes that all TV's soon will be HD, and he will be prepared to accomodate the coming ( my prediction ) Consumer demand, for HD apect prints.

In the meantime I will explore your suggestion on using the existing sizes. But I don't want my customers to have to cut prints.

Nicholas

Elysium · May 14, 2007

I have never heard of any demand for 16:9 prints whatsoever.

Andy · May 14, 2007

nickphoto123 wrote:

Hi Andy,

I think the time is coming for 'formal' 16x9 print aspect ratio prints of varying physical sizes.

Hopefully your printer realizes that all TV's soon will be HD, and he will be prepared to accomodate the coming ( my prediction ) Consumer demand, for HD apect prints.

In the meantime I will explore your suggestion on using the existing sizes. But I don't want my customers to have to cut prints.

Nicholas

I may be extremely dumb here, Nicholas, but I fail to see the correlation to a Television and a print? We have 20x10. That's pretty darn nice

I have this hanging over my studio workspace:

Printed on 20x10 paper and framed up. Looks great

nickphoto123 · May 14, 2007

Andy wrote:

I may be extremely dumb here, Nicholas, but I fail to see the correlation to a Television and a print?

Andy,

You are not dumb, but at times maybe you let your ego get in the way of things.

Today you can shoot 3x2 and go into a drug stores and get a 4x6 print.
Soon you will be able to go into the same drug store and get a similiar print but printed at 16 x9 aspect ratio, and if the printer were to keep the 6" edge as the max size for his output, he would offer a 6" x 3.375" print to his customers. The customer would have 6" x 3.375" bordeless prints, in the same way a 3x2 customer would have 4x6" prints.

All of this is just up the road and the typical consumer will call the shots on this one.

Please refer this to your technical and sales groups. I amsure they would be interested.

Respectfully yours,

Nicholas

P.S. That is a great image on your wall ( off topic but a great image. )

Andy · May 14, 2007

nickphoto123 wrote:

Andy wrote:

I may be extremely dumb here, Nicholas, but I fail to see the correlation to a Television and a print?

Andy,

You are not dumb, but at times maybe you let your ego get in the way of things.

Today you can shoot 3x2 and go into a drug stores and get a 4x6 print.
Soon you will be able to go into the same drug store and get a similiar print but printed at 16 x9 aspect ratio, and if the printer were to keep the 6" edge as the max size for his output, he would offer a 6" x 3.375" print to his customers. The customer would have 6" x 3.375" bordeless prints, in the same way a 3x2 customer would have 4x6" prints.

All of this is just up the road and the typical consumer will call the shots on this one.

Please refer this to your technical and sales groups. I amsure they would be interested.

Respectfully yours,

Nicholas

P.S. That is a great image on your wall ( off topic but a great image. )

Hi Nicholas, thanks for the feedback, we love this. If we hear more about folks wanting 16:9 prints, we'll surely look into it. In the meantime, I've made sure that Ben, our product manager has seen your request!

nickphoto123 · May 14, 2007

Andy wrote:

nickphoto123 wrote:

Hi Nicholas, thanks for the feedback, we love this. If we hear more about folks wanting 16:9 prints, we'll surely look into it. In the meantime, I've made sure that Ben, our product manager has seen your request!

Andy,
On several ocasions we have bumped heads, and each time, what popped out was something of benefit to all of us loyal users of SmugMug.

Your professionalism and great support, as always, is why I rely on Smugmug for my Printing and Customer support services.

Thank you Andy,

Nicholas

Dna · May 14, 2007

nickphoto123 wrote:

Hi Andy,

I think the time is coming for 'formal' 16x9 print aspect ratio prints of varying physical sizes.

Hopefully your printer realizes that all TV's soon will be HD, and he will be prepared to accomodate the coming ( my prediction ) Consumer demand, for HD apect prints.

In the meantime I will explore your suggestion on using the existing sizes. But I don't want my customers to have to cut prints.

Nicholas

I think you have this the wrong way around. How many 16:9 cameras do you know of ? How many 3:2 or 5:4 camera are there ?

I think Smugmug and EZ Print have enough ratios at the moment.

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Andrew

nickphoto123 · May 14, 2007

Dna wrote:

I think you have this the wrong way around. How many 16:9 cameras do you know of ? How many 3:2 or 5:4 camera are there ?

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

You just wait. I showed about 12 people my H9 images on my HD TV. They were all amazed at the image quality, color and true to life images on my HD TV. They all asked "What camera took that?"

They will go home and never be satisfied looking at a slide show that isn't HD TV. The camera manufacturers will swamp the market as soon as we all have to have HD TV's to view broadcast TV. (I am speaking about us here in the U.S. ).

The printers will soon follow. It will happen faster than you think.

Regards,

Nicholas

DoctorIt · May 14, 2007

nickphoto123 wrote:

You just wait. I showed about 12 people my H9 images on my HD TV. They were all amazed at the image quality, color and true to life images on my HD TV. They all asked "What camera took that?"

but what does this have to do with the aspect ratio? a smart tv could show you my 30D images (with a black border) every bit as beautiful.

cmason · May 14, 2007

I have no real need to 16:9 either, but the OP is likely identifying a trend: Imagine all those folks with Apple TV, PS3, Xbox. Heck my Canon SD800IS has 16:9, and plenty of resolution for full HD (it has NTSC output, which screws up the image when connected to the HDTV).

Think about movies, where 4:3 TV's use letterbox...most people hate it, because it isn't filling the screen, even though filling the screen cuts big parts of the movie out of the view! Most folks dont understand why there is black around their photo, just that there is, and they cant understand why the picture doesn't fill the screen. Heck it did on the old TV...right?

gluwater · May 14, 2007

I think what the OP is getting at is that there are some people that see a future with no still cameras. They will all be HD video that you can take stills from and they will be high enough resolution to print. I could be completely wrong with this assumption but I have heard it refered to a couple places before.

Dna · May 14, 2007

I agree that HD TV's are great. My boss is seriously into them and the images and HD DVDs that he has shown me look stunning.

I still can't see what this has to do with printing the images in the correct ratio. The number of camera in use that have a 16:9 ratio is miniscule compared to the number of cameras with 3:2 and 5:4 ratio.

Even then the print sizes are completely different ratios again.

Is it a trend ? Yes, possibly. There will probably be a small minority that will buy 16:9 cameras so they can display their photos on their HD TVs, but I would assume that the all the professional photographers will continue to use 3:2 ratio and print their photos.

Andrew

devbobo · May 14, 2007

nickphoto123 wrote:

Hi Andrew,

You just wait. I showed about 12 people my H9 images on my HD TV. They were all amazed at the image quality, color and true to life images on my HD TV. They all asked "What camera took that?"

As long as you shoot everything in landscape.

16:9 portrait photos would look extremely narrow on your HD TV, lotsa wasted space.

dragon300zx · May 15, 2007

Nicholas,

I know the guys have seen your request and put it on the list but lets look at the factors here.

A you are talking about borderless 16:9 aspect ratio's. As you mentioned the 4X6 is already really close to this and it is fairly easy to just cut off the white borders if they really bother you that much.

On top of that this is usually only going to be used for landscapes, after all as someone already said it would make portraits look really funny. And in landscapes if it's a printed picture most people are going to be framing it and putting it on the wall. When you properly frame something it has a matt, a matt crops some of the photo it's just a given. And there are no 16:9 aspect ratio ready cut matt's on the market that I have seen (and I pay attention to this), so your matt would have to be custom cut anyways. And as we said seeing as a matt crops the photo to begin with you are already not going to notice the white border around the image (again that is really easy to cut off).

Now if your concern is showing the photos on TV, as long as the person has a HD tv your golden (alot of people don't though). Then there are the monitors, alot of people aren't using hd or 16:9 monitors. Digital picture frames? Again I haven't seen any in a 16:9 format in the main stream yet.

If we are going to talk trends then we need to be watching what is really happening with printed photos, the way they are displayed, and they way the big dogs are doing it. Industry trend is showing some camera's capable of taking 16:9 photos, why? So people can show the photos on their tv's.

Now back to borderless 16:9 prints. This is going to require that printers (not the people the actual hardware) have their software revised to cut prints to this size (roll fed printers that most big print shops use) or it is going to require paper suppliers to begin offering paper in 16:9 ratio sizes. Again though this is going to require a software change for the printers so it recognizes that print size.

After doing some checking online none of the major print players are offering 16:9 ratio prints (mpix, ezprints, shutterfly, snapfish, etc). This tells me that this is not something people are seeing a high demand for yet. Which also tells me if people are wanting these prints they are cutting these ratio's by hand (see the earlier exp, about matting, displaying, etc).

Let's review. 16:9 ratio designed for TV, not photography. Popular demand is not showing a need for 16:9 ratio prints. Only usefulness would be landscapes as it would make portrait photos look really goofy. The major players are not offering 16:9 ratio prints, frames, or matt's.

Now in the future their may be this demand which is why smug takes these things and puts them on their "Things to think about" list. However I can't see any print company taking the expense on to offer 16:9 prints when they aren't seeing a massive demand for them (after all doing so would be costly).

Seems to me that a 16:9 ratio borderless print doesn't make much sense right now (specially when it is easy to trim the white off) from a business standpoint. And somehow I don't see any amount of your "convincing them" of this need is going to work right now seeing as the general market says there is no demand for this. If anything constant prodding is only going to make them resent you. It's one thing to make a suggestion and move on, it's another to think you are always 100% right and never let go of something, even though someone has said they will keep it under consideration for when there is a general market wide demand.

Are HD TV Aspect Ratio Prints Available?

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