Cropping- in camera, or in post?

[bribrius]

geez. you guys are old....

Yep.

I even filed out my negative to show the edges/borders of the negative, ala Henri Cartier-Bresson style.

and turned out more authentic images. I could learn a lot from oldtimers. I am feeling my images are all "plastic cookie cutter" and while some are "neat" all fake and garbage

 

[Designer]

Do you make it perfect in camera?

I consider it a compliment to have you think that I could possibly "make it perfect" in camera.

Even in the film days I found that cropping could help quite a lot.

Nowadays with digital, and even if I get it fairly close in camera, I find that I'm going to do some editing on the computer anyway, so I don't worry about how close I can make it.

Take leveling for instance. Yes, I can get it fairly close just because I have a pretty good eye when it comes to holding the camera straight, but it seems that "close" is not actually close enough most times.

Then the quiet time in the office sitting at the computer gives me plenty of time to sit and study the image to see how I want to crop it. For most of mine, I choose the "do not constrain" option when cropping because if I'm going to frame and hang a photo, I will just cut a mat to fit the frame, so I don't have to be overly concerned about the aspect ratio either.

 

[KmH]

Even with only 16mp you have plenty of crop room for 8x10's. An 8x10 @ 300 dpi has 7.2mp.

How did I ever manage doing professional photography using a 5.3 MP Nikon D1X?

2400 x 3000 pixels (7.2 MP) @ 300 pixels per inch (ppi) could be an 8x10 print. It would depend what printing device the print is made on.
Some C-print printing machine have a limit of 250 ppi.
The print lab would use their RIP software to decrease the image resolution to 2000 x 2500 pixels @250 ppi to make an 8x10 print.

Inkjet printer output resolution (dots per inch or dpi) is entirely different from digital photo image and print resolution because it takes multiple dots to print a single pixel.

 

[robbins.photo]

I generally shoot a little wide on purpose and crop/recompose as needed in post. My thought process is I'd much rather have a little extra that I can remove as opposed to the opposite, where I end up missing something that would have been nice to have.

 

[Gary A.]

and turned out more authentic images. I could learn a lot from oldtimers. I am feeling my images are all "plastic cookie cutter" and while some are "neat" all fake and garbage

That's not a bad attitude to have ... always striving for a better image ... always looking for ways to improve. But use that attitude for improvement and don't get hung up on it. When I was shooting my mentors and teachers would look at my stuff and say things like "... there is nothing new under the sun", then proceeded to kick my butt.

 

[Braineack]

that was the only way I'd do it back in HS:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/fwdFbk]
Joe Hitt in B&W (Film) by The Braineack, on Flickr[/URL]

 

[Overread]

I usually find that I frame too tightly and have been working on "fattening up".

I find I often suffer from the same problem. The thing is if you've shot tight you can't practically get that missing frame area back at all. Whilst if you've shot a little wider than you need you can always shave off a bit there and there to get the shot.

That said I suspect many of us try to compose as much as we can in-camera. I suspect the LCD on the back actually has a big part to play in this - we want to see the shot THEN right then when its done. We want to see the good shot then and feel that mental buzz of success rather than have it delayed for the editing stage (even though we all know we still have to look at things fullsize and in editing to see if we really did nail the focus etc..).

 

[Derrel]

Something to keep in mind when framing realllly tightly in-camera: when you apply the Adobe lens profile corrections, on many lenses the lens correction profiles will in effect, CROP OFF some of the image, by forcing the subjects close to the edge to be, well, cropped off!!! The Nikkor 70-200 VR and 35/2 Nikkors are somewhat bad about this. I shot a famous Oregon lighthouse two years ago, using both those lenses, and made a bunch of images I was happy with, and when I applied the Lightroom lens correction profiles it was like--NOPE! RUINS the images!

This is something to be aware of, especially on wide-angle lenses. If you plan on using lens correction profiles, keep in mind that filling that frame allll the way out to the edges might end up biting you in the butt.

If there is architectural distortion you plan on correcting later, also another time to shoot LOOSE!

 

[bratkinson]

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!

There's where I came from...slides. So there was no '2nd chance' at cropping it to get it exactly right. Then and now, I shoot with my glasses on, so things naturally come out a bit 'wide'.

Somehow, the film cameras gave a good full image in the viewfinder. Not so with digital. For whatever reasons, the image in the viewfinder is cropped a bit. So what. Now I end up shooting even wider, as I've put an eyepiece extender on the camera as well, and still wear my glasses.

But I've also come to the realization that I tend to shoot 'in the heat of the moment' and way too often don't "see" background clutter that should not be in the picture. Two Decembers ago, I was taking the Christmas card picture of our church pastors and their families. As with any group shots, I take at least 8-10 or more to make sure everyone has their eyes open, smiling, etc. It wasn't until I got home that I saw for the first time the wall mounted emergency light above the left-most person and a barren tree limb decorated with Christmas tree lights seemingly "growing" out of the pastors' wifes' head! Thank God for Photoshop & Lightroom!

Needless to say, I HAVE to crop almost everything to get the 'unseen' clutter out of the pictures. That, or Lightroom 'heal' them away. I save the result of those and other edits as a 'master copy' of my shots, that I subsequently crop to other sizes as needed for printing or presentations.