Cropping- in camera, or in post?

JustJazzie

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I've always framed pretty loosely and the cropped in post. With my 24 mpx nex7 this was never ever an issue. I could throw away over half the frame if I wanted and not have any issues. The few times I made sure to frame it perfectly in camera, I got home and realized I couldn't crop to anything except my original aspect ration. Probably, having such leeway made me a lazy photographer.

Not that I am down to only 16 mpx, I feel pretty bad throwing away "valuable" pixels, but I don't want to ruin anymore shots by limiting myself to 4x6.

Really, it just made me curious where everyone else stands on this issue. Do you make it perfect in camera? Do you already have an aspect ratio in mind when you shoot, and instinctually frame accordingly? Or do you frame loose and crop later?

Most importantly, how much leeway do I have in a 16mpx image to crop later? Assuming I'm not printing more than an 8x10.
 
I 'shoot fat' and leave room for post process cropping when I shoot people, so I can crop for both 7:5 and 5:4.
With a 3:2 image sensor 5:4 requires the most crop.

The rest of the time I usually crop in the viewfinder by using a zoom lens and/or moving the camera closer/further.
 
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I try to compose as much as possible in camera, but as Keith says, I do also keep in mind that I may need some "play" room depending on what size I decide to make the final image, so I try, when possible, to leave a little room to make adjustments.

There are also times--mostly when shooting birds--when I have no choice but to crop in post, and I know that going in. Sometimes you just can't get close enough to a bird to fill the frame the way you would like, so you just compose the shot *knowing* that you'll be cropping in post.

I've really only ever had maybe two pictures that I would have LIKED to have printed bigger but couldn't because they were cropped too much. Most of the time, even with my 16mp D7000, I end up with images that I've printed as big as 16x20 with no trouble.
 
I usually find that I frame too tightly and have been working on "fattening up".

Even with only 16mp you have plenty of crop room for 8x10's. An 8x10 @ 300 dpi has 7.2mp.
 
I usually find that I frame too tightly and have been working on "fattening up".

Even with only 16mp you have plenty of crop room for 8x10's. An 8x10 @ 300 dpi has 7.2mp.
This info is pretty helpful! Now I'll have to google a grid showing the difference between 8 and 16 mpx. :) I'm pretty confidant any picture I would want to do larger than 8x10 would haver much more foresight and hopefully not require an arbitrary crop in post....

Edit: Duh! Dx mode on the nikon puts me to 8mpx, so that gives me a pretty good idea of where I stand!
 
Depends what I'm shooting and what I'm planning for the photo. Birds in flight are probably going to remain digital. If I have enough lens I will fill the frame. Usually also with flowers. Shooting a building with a wide lens, tilted, I like to leave lots of space because correcting perspective will use a lot of the frame. Some people photos, like street photography, I will try to fill the frame. Posed portraits might be 4 X 6, 5 X 7, or 8 X 10, so leaving some space is important if the background is complex. Shot on a white seamless, I fill the frame, I can add as much background as I want in post, and it only takes a moment. Sports could always use a longer lens than I have, so cropping is seldom a problem.

My Canon 30D has an 8 Mpx sensor.
 
I was taught back in the "never crop! shoot for knock-out borders!" era...you know, using every single millimeter of the 35mm frame, so I shot that way for a long time. I still do, for the most part, but have reallllllly loosened up on that over the past few years, and the past two years especially since I started using Lightroom to process my images. Lightroom makes cropping, and pasting crops, so fast and easy. Also, I've started experimenting more with 1:1 aka square format images more and more.

I think you might be overly preoccupied with cropping into 16 million pixel Df images, Jazzie. Even whacked way down, they have 12 million pixels left over, and that was at one time considered high-resolution imaging! Cropping in post is much easier,and I think better than trying to frame everything perfectly in-camera. Shooting looser, than cropping is probably really the better approach,despite the dogma I was taught back in the 1970's.
 
I try to crop in-camera only. Back in the film-only days, there was a point when I only cropped in the camera and only printed full frame. Typically. if the image wasn't perfect or near perfect, (as nothing is perfect), with my framing/composition then it was dumped.

This technique served me well in improving my photography. I print fat ... Lol. I let the image dicate the final size of the 'printed' photo. I use multiple adjustable frames to make up any differences between the size of the printed image and the borders of standard paper. It sorta looks like stacked matte boards.

Gary
 
I think you might be overly preoccupied with cropping into 16 million pixel Df images, Jazzie.
Why am I preoccupied? (I know you're wondering! :giggle:) Because I honestly haven't done much printing since I went digital. But I am FINALLY getting to a point where I think some of my images are worth printing, so I am trying to fill in the blanks on what this mpx dpi mumbo jumbo actually means when it's not on a computer. *sigh*

Good to know I still have plenty of wiggle room!!
 
I am so off on this it isn't even funny. Half the time I don't even frame a photo normally anyway to bother cropping. I don't know if it is my style or what but thank God I hardly even put things to print. Perfect example (I was playing around) is here. It isn't that I didn't take a photo of the entire bike, I just didn't want the entire bike. A lot of times I seem to purposely cut things off in the frame. Not because I don't know how to frame, it is natural inclination for what I like in a photo. When I start getting in trouble when thinking this way is WHEN I DO NEED TO CROP or I am thinking of how to send it to print and the photo is already what I wanted. A lot of stuff I shoot though, it isn't framed to start with.
 

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I was taught back in the "never crop! shoot for knock-out borders!" era...you know, using every single millimeter of the 35mm frame, so I shot that way for a long time. I still do, for the most part, but have reallllllly loosened up on that over the past few years, and the past two years especially since I started using Lightroom to process my images. Lightroom makes cropping, and pasting crops, so fast and easy. Also, I've started experimenting more with 1:1 aka square format images more and more.

I think you might be overly preoccupied with cropping into 16 million pixel Df images, Jazzie. Even whacked way down, they have 12 million pixels left over, and that was at one time considered high-resolution imaging! Cropping in post is much easier,and I think better than trying to frame everything perfectly in-camera. Shooting looser, than cropping is probably really the better approach,despite the dogma I was taught back in the 1970's.

We're old!

Back in the 1970's, I shot slide film almost exclusively. Everything was done in camera because once it was developed and mounted there was no chance to change it. Digital technology has provided opportunities to loosen up a lot!
 
geez. you guys are old....:1219:
 
Yeah...the old filed negative carrier thing with the black, knock-out borders. I still like the look of roughly 6x9 inch B&W prints made with knock-out neg borders, printed on 8x10 sheets of paper with that nice border of white paper to allow handling and so on. I used to think shooting "full frame" meant shooting for a finished image that was close to perfect with 100% of the frame being used was a Holy Grail. But the older I get, I think that's really just more of an affectation than anything.

The idea that the 3:2 frame proportion is ideal for everything is just...stupid. The 3:2 frame was arrived at almost by accident, and has never been the predominant aspect ratio. Other aspect ratios have existed for decades. 4x5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x4.5, 4:3, and newer ones like 6x17 and 16:9, as well as older aspects like 11x14, there are many more ways to see than "24x36mm" AKA 3:2. I think the old Leica-era idealization of the 3:2 ratio is just a hanger-on from long ago. But I do remember Interview magazine, which was a 3:2 aspect ratio magazine, which ran a LOT of uncropped 35mm photos. The whole magazine was basically...inelegant and horribly ungainly, which really showed how awkward the 3:2 proportion is. I have NEVER seen another 3:2 magazine besides Interview.

I dunno...how we look at and display images has a bearing on how we compose/crop 'em. I think for computer use, the new 4:3 aspect ratio looks pretty good on computers, but now we also have these wide-screen computers and laptops...which do very well with 16:9 wide-aspect scenes that are shot in landscape orientation.

I think the real old frontier we're BACK to exploring is 1:1, via Instagram mostly. Like Huey Lewis sang, "It's hip to be square!" I wish my camera offered me a 1:1 in-camera grayed out screen option; currently I have 3:2 option in FX and DX, and also 5:4 option with the left and right sides grayed-out. I honestly think that the 5:4 aspect ratio SOLVES A TON OF PROBLEMS in portraiture, which are caused directly by the tall,skinny 3:2 aspect ratio of most d-slrs.
 

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