Nikon D90 sensor

[WAP007]

Hi everyone!
I have a query regarding the sensor on my D90.
I have been taken photos that fill the lcd and doing like a lot of people do, just downloading to my laptop and leaving it at that.
I have taken some photos which i'm really pleased with and wanted to get them printed, so I took my SD card to the local photography shop to do so.
I thought I would just get them printed and that would be that, but I was losing a lot of the photo and the final image wasn't what i wanted.
The guy in charge came over to help and said that the sensor in my camera shot at 12''x10'' so if I shot photos that fit the lcd I would end always end up having to crop them, or get them printed at the 12x10 size ( impossible to get a frame off the shelf to fit), or shoot wide and then crop when printing.
Is this normal?
My friend has a D7000 and what she sees on the lcd is what she is able to get printed without any adjustments.
Another things with my camera is it does seem to over expose when using lighting. It's fine in normal light, but I have done a couple of workshops, the lighting checked with an exposure meter and everyone set there camera to that. Mine had to be adjusted by 1-2 stops to get the same exposure.
Is there something in the menu that needs changing?
Thanks in advance for your replies

[Rod Lawton]

Hi WAP007.
The advice you got from your local photography shop sounds jumbled, but there is a valid point at the heart of it, and it's to do with camera aspect ratios, which is the ratio of the picture's width compared to its height, versus common print sizes.
The sensor in your D90 does NOT shoot 12" x 10" photos. Its pictures have an aspect ratio of 3:2, which means you can print at any size you like without cropping as long as the paper has a 3:2 ratio as well. The LCD display on the back of the camera has a 3:2 ratio too. So 6" x 4" prints will be fine, or 9" x 6" or 12" x 8", say. But papers don't necessarily come in those sizes.
If your photography shop is offering 12" x 10" prints, that's a 6:5 aspect ratio, which is very different. It means if the photo fits the full height of the paper, you're not going to get the full width of the picture – and on 12" x 10" paper, you will lose quite a lot.
Your friend with the D7000 probably went to a different photograph shop or asked about a different (wider) paper size. If you take a look at http://www.photobox.co.uk/shop/print...rgement-prints you'll see visually how different common print sizes look, and why some may crop the edges of your D90's pictures, simply because of their proportions.
I'm not sure I can help with your D90 exposure query - it's the sort of thing where you have to be there to see what's happening. Broadly, though, if your D90 is fine outdoors and you can adjust the exposure to get good shots under artificial lighting, I wouldn't worry too much. Traditional hand-held meters and modern digital SLRs don't always agree about exposure settings.
Rod Lawton.

[WAP007]

Thanks for your reply, but I'm a bit confused.
If the ratio is 3:2 then i would be able to print 6x4 etc as you said, but when my image appeared on the Kodak print machine, the cropping white box which was set at 6x4 was significantly smaller than the image and again at 7x5. Hence the 12x10 print I had done, which gave me the full image with no distortion that you can get when altering ratios.