Odd sizes?!

[57603oh]

Hi all!
I am using a Canon EOS D60. When in England the photo's that I have printed have all been 6x4 and have come out fitting the frame just fine. Now I also live in the states too (my wife is American thus split time between the two) but I noticed A4 paper is slightly different in size. Now I don't know if it the camera (brought in England) or paper sizes being different but when I print anything larger that 6x4 pictures, it either gets cropped because image doesn't fit or I have to let the top and bottom of the print have white gaps/spaces in them letting the rest of the image extent to the edges/sides of the print. Does anyone know why this is? Cos I am confused and kinda frustrated with it :/ Thanks in advance to anyone that can help!

[carlb40]

Its down to the aspect ratio. Printing companies, paper still go by the old sizes ( imperial) from the film days. The modern DSLR's have a different aspect ratio to what film guys used. I know on some canon DSLR's you can change the aspect ratio, and see the crop lines during the framing up. However despite that it still takes the picture in the native aspect ratio and is saved that way.

[Roger S]

In the film days, 35mm was 3:2 ratio, or 6X4, 12X8, etc. Even then, American printing paper was in standard 8/1/2X11, or 10X12, or 6X4, or 3/1/2X5. You will get the drift here. Paper sizes have never matched film or digital except in a very few cases. To top that off, UK style A4 is slightly different than North American letter paper. Don't worry, your camera aspect ratio has nothing to do with UK or North American standards. It's set worldwide by each manufacturer for each model. Get used to ratio cropping as a part of your life when sending things to a printer.

[tenchy]

In the USA the only difference you should see is that they use letter size, which is different to A4 over here. (You will have had the annoying Microsoft default to letter paper for documents I am sure!)

[57603oh]

Hmm well as long as its just generally the size of images of the camera itself, I will bare this in mind in future. Thanks guys for clearing that up for me :)