I have a few square format film cameras that I haven’t yet tried so I thought to try one of them. However, it occurred to me that I have only very limited experience with that format and there was a very real possibility that I would waste a lot of expensive film trying (and possibly failing) with a film camera.

So, I thought I’d practice with a digital camera. I knew that I had at least one digital camera that would allow me to see at 1:1 aspect ratio on screen: My 14-year-old Panasonic LX-3. But did I have something a bit more recent? Well, it turned out that I did. In fact, I had more than one. My Panasonic Lumix GX-85 and my Sony RX100 (and maybe others that I didn’t check) also did. Since the RX100 is very small and light I thought I’d take that.

So how did it go? Not surprisingly not that well. The RX100 shows you the 1:1 a2pect ratio in the viewfinder, but it doesn’t actually crop the image. Rather, when you bring the image into Lightroom it shows the full picture with the 1:1 crop superimposed. With almost all of the images I decided to reject the 1:1 crop and choose another one (e.g. 4×6) that I’m more familiar with. I guess I don’t’ yet see images with a 1:1 aspect ratio. I’ll have to practice more.

Taken with a Sony RX100 MIII