XPan Crop

Yesterday I watched a video of a bird photographer that cropped his images from his Canon R7 into an XPan crop of 65:24 aspect ratio. I was reminded how great this crop ratio is for some subjects. This is the first time I have seen it applied to birds.

I have seen other videos of the XPan (i.e. Thomas Heaton) that have always been interesting. I have been using the 16x9 crop factor for years on several of my photos. I have just never tried the XPan crop of 65:24, usually because I forget about it. Last night I was doing some scouting for my night photography project and saw the following scene that was ready for the XPan crop.

Contrails over Kent Narrows

I’m going to try and consciously try to remember this crop aspect ratio in the future. I really like how it emphasizes the horizontal composition for certain subjects. This may become my new favorite horizontal crop replacing 16x9.