Composition for Cropping

woodsac

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How does everyone else handle this? You envision a shot, take the time to set up, properly expose, and compose the shot the best you can within the viewfinder. You go home, process the shot...and it's beautiful. Success!

But then someone wants a 5x7 or 8x10 print :er: Now, once you crop, to fit the print size, you risk loosing the combined strong points of the composition. Now if you're printing yourself, you can scale to print. But, when I send out to mpix or anywhere else, I have to crop the image.

Is this just something I have to deal with, or is there a way around it? It's just frustrating :confused:
 
Started using a 35mm slide mount on a 50mm section of toilet roll! Now I see the world as a standard lens!! Visualisation comes after time and experience, the viewfinder just helps me check I haven't chopped a bit off or included a wrong bit!

Rob
 
Sorry Rob, but I don't understand what you're saying? I am framing and photographing exactly what I want to see, no problem there. But in order to reproduce that on a small print, I lose a significant amount of the image.
 
I guess the only suggestion is to keep the sides of your print where they are not required to make the photo. They can enhance it but keep in mind that for each picture you might lose a strip from 1 or both sides due to a crop. If you are worried where the crop is going to be either pre-crop it (if digital) or order a full size (like a 8*12) and crop it yourself.
 
Most shots I do will work in whatever format I want; 12 x 8 (3:2) to 10 x 8 (5:4). In this case I just process the image at 3:2 with room for cropping on the sides when necessary.

However, sometimes only one or the other works so I'll simply not even consider doing a crop I don't like.
 
Thanks zedin. I pre-crop everything before I send it out.

Marctwo, maybe the ratio is my problem (lack of experience)? Of course, the bigger the print, the more image I save. 11x14 and 16x20 come out great. But, like I said, the smaller 8x10 and down, I have to physically crop out parts of the image in order to make it fit.

Marctwo said:
However, sometimes only one or the other works so I'll simply not even consider doing a crop I don't like.
Maybe that's what I need to consider. I just won't be able to offer some prints in smaller sizes ;) Thanks for the help.
 
Sorry woodsac but I don't get what you are talking about... why can't you crop it to the smaller sizes? you can always resize the prints... as far as I know there are a few "small" sizes of the prints with the same ratio as bigger ones...
 
I think that is just something that comes with experience. If you think that you will need to make 5x7 or 8x10 prints (weddings for example)...then you leave some room in the composition for cropping. You could even envision the crop and shoot with that in mind.

I find that I crop 90% of my shots in post processing. Not that I'm careless when I'm taking the shot...I just like to have a bit of margin to work with and I like to have the option. There is nothing worse than going over the shots and wishing that you had taken a step back or zoomed out on every hot.
 
woodsac said:
Sorry Rob, but I don't understand what you're saying? I am framing and photographing exactly what I want to see, no problem there. But in order to reproduce that on a small print, I lose a significant amount of the image.

If you're shooting with 35mm film, you can construct a manual viewfinder using a 35mm frame sized hole and a tube of the same length as your lens - this is an old trick to make a manual viewfinder cheaply. It makes you look stupid though.
 
I always design my images for a set image size. If people want my pictures a different size then they can want. If they don't like it that's their problem.
People didn't go to Picasso and say 'love the painting but could you do it a bit smaller?' ;)
 
OK...so I wasn't missing anything. They're just a bunch of cheap bastards that only want to pay for a small print, but with everything that the big print has on it :lmao: j/k

Rob, I shoot digital, but that makes perfect sense now that you explain it :thumbup:

Mentos, I can always crop it to a smaller size, but a 5x7 crop only allows for so many pixels of height and length. I couldn't crop a 36 inch 10800 pixel pano to 7 inches and still have the entire scene. Does that make more sense?

Thanks for all the help!

 
If you have a 16 x 20 image and you want to do an 8 x 10, you need to resize it rather than crop it. As they are both the same aspect ratio (4:5), you won't lose any of the composition - you'll just lose some detail as you'll be using less pixels to make the same image.

I've never used one of those printing services but I think most of them can do the resizing for you. Of course, you'd have to speak to them about that.
 
I don't like the rectangular format at all for this very reason.

If you like your portrait orientation, you shell out 100 bucks for the grip.

If I'm shooting a night out with a point and shoot, I want 4*6... but the damn camera gives me 3:4 so I have to crop

If I'm shooting with a DSLR, I can print 8*12 but you can never get frames for that! So I end up cropping to 8*10

If I'm shooting BW film, I end up wasting paper because I print with a filed negative holder and I lose almost 2 inches per 8*10 sheet.

They really got it right with the 6*6 format. You just shoot it and the flash brackets don't need to flip at all!
 
Yeah... I'd love to know who comes up with all these 'standard' sizes.

BTW, I frame 8 x 12 in 12 x 16 with a 2" mat - just the job. :)
 

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