Expert: John Oliverio - 10/22/2009

Question
John,

I have a cannon power shot A540 and was wondering if you can change the aspect ratio on this camera.  I know they are set a 4:3 by the factory but can you change it to a 3:2?? I have both my power shot and a rebel and have noticed that when I send my pictures in to walmart the ones I take with the power shot are not a 4x6 and instead of cropping walmart asks if I want them to be printed as a true digital which is smaller than a 4x6 and doesn't fit perfectly in a 4x6 fram which are all standard frames anyway.  So I want to know if you can change the aspect ratio on the camera settings or if they are just stuck that way by the factory.  And if you can't do you know a small camera that you can change the setting on or that has the correct aspect ratio.  I am lost when it comes to this and wondering then if you have a 3:2 aspect ratio on a picture but want to print a larg 8x10 what does that do???  Do you have any recommendations or other ideas on how to go about this.

Answer
Stephanie,

Unfortunately if you can't change the aspect ratio (which you can't on your camera) all you can do is crop the picture when you print it.  

Some higher end machines let you change the aspect ratio.  The one that springs to mind is the Olympus EP1.

John