metallic cool, enlargements suck

Finally got my Mpix.com prints today. At $5, the shipping is not cheap, but the pictures are nicely packaged - even shrink-wrapped! I chose the metallic paper, and the prints are quite unusual. Not great for portraits or landscapes, since the paper's base hue is literally metallic instead of white. But for artificial or artificially-lit subjects, it's slick stuff. I'm gonna need more lights! Not to mention larger frames, more walls...

BTW, never order 6x9 prints, unless you like making custom frames and custom mats. I gather that our idiosyncratic system of 3.5x5, 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14 print/frame sizes are derived from the standard film sheet sizes back in the days before 35mm cameras became popular. I presume photo paper was originally designed for contact printing - i.e., for the same sizes as the film. But whatever the original excuse, we're now stuck with at least five different aspect ratios for enlargements. Only 4x6 (and other multiples of 3x2) matches the standard film/DSLR aspect ratio, meaning, to enlarge, you always have to crop - up to 17% of the picture for the most common size of 8x10. Not one of the standard sizes corresponds to the standard 4:3 ratio of the majority of cameras sold today. Which is funny, since that ratio is a carryover from computer displays, which were modeled on TV, which, in turn, merely mimicked the Academy standard at the time of its invention. Ironically, Hollywood used (and still uses) 35mm film.

What happens when we complete the switch to HDTV? HDTV is 16:9 (i.e., 1.78:1), while movies are typically shot between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1. Some older/arthouse films are 1.66:1, and almost everything before 1953 is the Academy standard 1.37:1 (which DVD manufacturers crop, claiming it's actually 1.33:1 to match SDTV). Meanwhile, the Dell Inspiron 700m and Apple "Cinema" Displays are 1.6:1, while the Nano looks to be about 1.5:1. (finally, one that fits SLR photos!)

People. Forget about Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD. Can we first agree to show the whole image we paid for?

Perhaps I'll take a page out of the Disney marketing book, and write at the bottom of each frame:

"The black bars you see at the bottom and top of the frame are intentional..."