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The new Canon 5D Mark III allow you to activate a 6x4 grid in the viewfinder. Does anyone know the use of such a grid (instead of a more classic 3x3) for composition, besides obvious horizontal/vertical alignment?

Another thing to note: the Mark III allow you to use either 3x3 (with or without diagonals) or 6x4 grid when reviewing pictures, or when shooting through the LV screen, but only the 6x4 grid when using the VF...??? Maybe in a future firmware?

This was the real starting point for my question. Anyway, thanks to all fellows who took time to post answers!

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I've always thought any grid was simply to help you with alignment and to help you judge subject position; the number of divisions being nothing more than personal preference. – Dan Wolfgang May 18 '12 at 17:12
There is also vertex alignment...positioning subjects at the intersections of grid lines, regardless of how well they may line up vertically or horizontally. – jrista♦ May 18 '12 at 17:30

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I was recently trying to take photos to use for screen/browser backgrounds - where the result needs to be very short and very wide. It turns out that there's not a very good way to scale pictures to that aspect (at least ones with real world objects in them that become unpleasant when overly stretched), so they need to be taken using a small part of the vertical canvas and then cropped. Having two different sets of guidelines on the viewer to choose from might make composition like this a bit easier. I don't have a camera with that feature to test it out.

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Thanks, I did not thought of that one. – Pierre Le Gallo May 24 '12 at 15:26
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Grid in cameras is for two reasons. first, as others said, for align lines. Second, for many of more important, for easy finding of STRONG POINTS in composition. Check about golden ratio on the web, also for rule of third. Here grid is very usefull. Some cameras have grid exactly for rule of third and golden ratio composition.

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Thanks Dude. I knew about golden ratio (in fact Fibonacci suite) and 3x3 grids, which is sometimes confused with the previous one. There are excellent discussions on the net about these two and how they relate. But I found nothing on 6x4 grids. A strange thing is new Mark III allow you to use either 3x3 or 6x4 grid for review pictures, but only the 6x4 grid for the VF... – Pierre Le Gallo May 24 '12 at 15:23

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