Shooting square

When I upgraded my phone to an iPhone 4S it instantly took over as my main camera. I use Camera+ and ProHDR, olloclip lens attachments and POPA and I couldn’t be happier with the results I get.

When we were getting ready for a six week trip Australia in January, I started tossing up the pros and cons of a 4S being my only camera on the trip. I knew photography would be one of my main releases and despite being more than happy with my 4S, I couldn’t get past the thought of not taking a ‘real’ camera. With a few days to go, I laid out for a new Olympus E-PL3.

The PEN’s a great little camera (and I might write more about it one day.) It’s small, lightweight, has a great LCD screen and the image quality is better than my Canon 400D that’s gathering dust in a box somewhere.

I know it takes a while to get used to any new camera but I really struggled with the PEN at first. It wasn’t the controls or modes, most of which I know I’ll never use. It wasn’t framing on an LCD screen.

It was the shots.

They felt wrong. It took me a few days to figure out why.

They weren’t square.

I realised that I’ve become so accustomed to shooting for Instagram’s square format that composing within a rectangle felt awkward. Luckily, the PEN has a setting to switch between 4:3, 16:9 and square formats, so I switched it to square and you know what?

Everything immediately felt right again.