I am a painter. I took a photo of a painting and noticed that the aspect ratio looked a little off.

[jwt99]

The aspect ratio looked slightly wider in the horizontal and shorter in the vertical aspect.  I turned the painting horizontal and took a photo and it looked correct but when I rotated it to upright in digital photo pro it returned to the slightly wider and shorter than reality aspect ratio.  Any help would be appreciated. I am using a EOS 40D camera.

[cicopo]

A guess but most likely you're too close & using a lens which needs to distort the image slightly to capture it.

[jwt99]

I am at least 8 feet away from the 16X24 inch painting using a 35-135mm lens.

[ebiggs1]

If you are trying to frame it exactly that will probably not work.  Leave room around it and crop it to size in post.

[jwt99]

I did take a photo larger than the painting and then cropped it  but the aspect ratio just isn't quite right.

[ebiggs1]

Use unconstarined crop!

[jwt99]

I am using unconstrained crop.  The problem with the aspect ratio seems to be in the camera firmware.  It doesn't look right in the camera image viewer.  I went back and viewed some images from a few years ago and the images looked good then.  I was able to see a very obvious difference in 16X20 inch painting images versus 16X24 inch painting images.  Now the 16X24 inch painting images look very similar in aspect ratio to the 16X20 and both of them look a little shorter and wider than the original paintings.  It is distressing because I use this camera a lot for painting and this error makes it pretty much useless.

[Waddizzle]

---

@jwt99 wrote:

I am using unconstrained crop.  The problem with the aspect ratio seems to be in the camera firmware.  It doesn't look right in the camera image viewer.  I went back and viewed some images from a few years ago and the images looked good then.  I was able to see a very obvious difference in 16X20 inch painting images versus 16X24 inch painting images.  Now the 16X24 inch painting images look very similar in aspect ratio to the 16X20 and both of them look a little shorter and wider than the original paintings.  It is distressing because I use this camera a lot for painting and this error makes it pretty much useless.

---

If I am understanding you correctly, you have used this same camera in the past with satisfactory results.  However, recent shots seem to have an aspect ratio issue.  Right?  So, what has changed between then and now? 

What software are you using to perform the crop?  What "camera image viewer" are you using?  Could it be that you are just now noticing the aspect ratio anomolies?

[jwt99]

I looked at the images from a couple years ago of the same painting and the aspect ratio was clearly correct in those.  I am still using exactly the same program to convert the images but as I said, I think it is in the camera firmware because I can see the anomaly in the camera flat screen.  If I take a photo of the 16 X24 painting laying horizontally it looks longer and when I rotate it to normal up and down it looks like it changes to 16X20 aspect ratio in other words from 4X6 to 4x5.

[kvbarkley]

This hasn't been a problem for years. Pixels are now square. Get it into photoshop and use the ruler, don't tell us what it "looks" like.