[Wight snapper]

You can only get the composition right in camera if the sensor proportions are exactly as you want the final picture to be. My final pictures are printed to the A standard - that is 2.8:2 rather than 3:2 - so I always have to crop a part of the image to make it fit the paper. And for me, a picture has to be printed on paper to be finished.

Aesthetically, the digital 3:2 ratio is not very pleasing. I prefer to reduce the length by a bit rather than reduce the paper height by a bit more to keep to the sensor proportions.

That's interesting and relates to some extent to the native format of the various cameras on offer. I shoot Digital with a C-sensor ( couldn't afford a "Full Frame" and have too many lenses to change now). Compared to Canon's 1.6 : 1, my Nikon's 1.5 : 1 is a bit "fatter" which I think is particularly helpful in Portrait mode.

Where did you inherit or develop this attachment to 1.4 : 1 and do you adopt that right across the photographic board ?

You could argue that now we all have megapixels to spare it is of little consequence to crop away a few unless trying to print above A3. Should we, perhaps, forget all that nonsense about "The Golden Mean" and just crop each image to whatever suits it best ? A Landscape with a poor sky sometimes merits being cropped down into a 2:1 Panoramic like my old Linhof Technica churned out.

As I said in an earlier post . . . I quite like the square format.
Surely, it's "Horses for Courses ?"