Suddenly struggling with widescreen/letterbox issues?

[Cassady]

Hi all,

Took a bunch of pics today at some sites of interest. When I pulled them off the iPhone, and viewed on the Mac, they are letterboxed (I.e black bars on left and right side)!?

I abhor filming/taking pics in vertical/portrait mode - and always throw the phone over to landscape (unless the object being snapped fits better in the former). Did all of that today - and now this? Any suggestions?

Don't want to sit with the same problem tomorrow.

Ps - thought I might have taken them with the phone 'upside' down, since that sometimes causes problems. Took two now, in landscape mode - with volume buttons on bottom, then on top. Both still have the bars when viewing them in the Photos app on the phone - i.e., it's not snapping/displaying widescreen.

 

[Fudzy]

Rotation lock? Swipe up and check if the button with the lock and the round arrow is pushed.

 

[Cassady]

Rotation lock? Swipe up and check if the button with the lock and the round arrow is pushed.

I'm thinking that's somehow involved. I had rotation lock on this morning, reading in bed - BUT switched it off. It's still off. But those pics appear to have been taken as if it was on? I've reset/restarted the phone since I posted the above, and it's still doing it. Bizarre.

 

[Fudzy]

Are you sure you're not in Letterbox mode? Assuming you know your way around the phone.

I'm assuming the photos have physical black lines in them, it's not just the image viewer rotating the image to the wrong angle and the black lines are in the background.

 

[Cassady]

Are you sure you're not in Letterbox mode? Assuming you know your way around the phone.

I'm assuming the photos have physical black lines in them, it's not just the image viewer rotating the image to the wrong angle and the black lines are in the background.

What do you mean by Letterbox mode? The 'square' option in the camera app? If that's what you meant - then no.

The black lines are visible when I rotate the phone to landscape mode when viewing the photos in the iPhone photo app. Unless I'm losing my mind, pretty sure that when I used to do this - the photo was 'stretched' by iOS to fill the entire landscape view. I didn't think too much of it then - assuming something had gone wonky with the rotation lock. I was basically seeing my photos letterboxed, like DVDs are, when you play around with the screen-ratio (with my bars being on the side - not at the top and bottom).

Those black lines usually appear when you take a pic in Potrait mode, and rotate to landscape when viewing it. Here, I took 90% in landscape mode - but when viewing them in landscape, I still get the bars. Does my explanation make sense?

When I imported those pics into iPhoto, they were 'square'. Again - landscape photos, when viewed on my Mac, are 'wide', for lack of a technical term. The whole bunch today were not. It's as if I did take them using the square option - when I certainly didn't. I'm now looking at pics that are quite a bit smaller than I was expecting - and don't want this to go on tomorrow!

 

[Cassady]

Aargh. I don't know. Maybe I am losing my mind. You've had me now go look at previous photos in iPhoto - and they appear to look the same. So maybe I'm imagining the effect on my Mac.

But could someone clarify - if you take a photo in landscape, and then view that same photo in landscape on your phone - is it letterboxed?

 

[Fudzy]

Can you take a photo and upload it here?

 

[Cassady]

Can you take a photo and upload it here?

I'll try get this one through. Wifi in this hotel is flaky as all hell.

 

[Cassady]

I'll try get this one through. Wifi in this hotel is flaky as all hell.

Wtf?

[sigh]. Will try tomorrow again.

Do you see black bars when viewing a landscape-taken pic in landscape mode?

 

[Fudzy]

Wtf?

[sigh]. Will try tomorrow again.

Do you see black bars when viewing a landscape-taken pic in landscape mode?

No, neither on my wife's iPhone 5 or my Galaxy S5. As long as the resolution is good and the whole photo is being taken it should be okay. You can crop the black lines out afterwards but it's really bizarre.