More megapixels - What is all this talk about Crop

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm sorry if I'm being thick, Bobby, but I'm finding it difficult to get from this:


To this:


Discipline, experience and learning leads to becoming what I call "a competent photographer". IOW, a photographer who can almost always get the shot, regardless.

These things also include learning to be prepared.

In order to improve my composition of form and colour, I made a compact with myself that I would never crop my images. That was in late 2007. To this day, this is my aim.

Bruce Postle both encouraged this in me, and also further impressed the need for these things, when he came to my home to deliver a book. We spent a couple of hours discussing these things, and examining/critiquing my own work, all of which I was grateful for.

BTW, I've shot a few events where not getting the shot was not an option.
It was more in reference to your quote about cropping

"Heavy cropping is a sign of a rank amateur who is too lazy to compose shots in the viewfinder. These shooters often use wider-than-optimal focal lengths and then attempt to correct compositions by cropping away parts of the subject they don’t want. But reducing a 4608 x 3456 pixel image to 2400 x 1800 pixels actually discards three quarters of the pixels, which reduces image quality."

It sounds like elitists snob crap. Cropping is an available tool just like a ND filter, Photoshop, etc. Calling out any tool because one doesn't use it is self serving rubbish.
 
It was more in reference to your quote about cropping

"Heavy cropping is a sign of a rank amateur who is too lazy to compose shots in the viewfinder. These shooters often use wider-than-optimal focal lengths and then attempt to correct compositions by cropping away parts of the subject they don’t want. But reducing a 4608 x 3456 pixel image to 2400 x 1800 pixels actually discards three quarters of the pixels, which reduces image quality."

It sounds like elitists snob crap. Cropping is an available tool just like a ND filter, Photoshop, etc. Calling out any tool because one doesn't use it is self serving rubbish.
And it sounds ridiculous to the point of absurdity to suggest, on a photography forum, that learning how better to use one's equipment is, in any way, "elitists snob crap".

Of course cropping is sometimes an essential tool. However, the author of that quote gives his reasons:

1) "These shooters often use wider-than-optimal focal lengths and then attempt to correct compositions by cropping away parts of the subject they don’t want."

And:

2) "But reducing a 4608 x 3456 pixel image to 2400 x 1800 pixels actually discards three quarters of the pixels, which reduces image quality."

These reasons are both valid, and technically correct.
 
And it sounds ridiculous to the point of absurdity to suggest, on a photography forum, that learning how better to use one's equipment is, in any way, "elitists snob crap".
It's not elitist crap, but it is beginner crap.

I've been there, I am still there with some of my gear. Seeing what the lens sees, visualizing your focal length, that's all very enjoyable and very "pure" and does help one learn about their lens choices. But when you need to get a shot and make that shot work, then talk of not cropping is just totally out of tune weirdness.

I think the whole not cropping mentality has become a bit played out, honestly. And I've spent a lot of time there myself.

Of course, one can go the way of the old time purist like Henri Cartier-Bresson, insisting about not cropping his images, but that was because publications were cropping out details of his overall compositions and displaying the cropped details like they were his intentional images. That was destroying the artistic vision. Cropping as the artist before you display your work is part of the vision.
 
I don't think anyone's saying it's preferable to crop rather than to get it right right away, or that teaching yourself discipline is bad or snobbish. It's just the blanket nature of that photoreview quote that comes across as snobbery, because it ignores the fact that like anything in life, photographic opportunities rarely come in convenient packages. Yes you can (and as a pro, should) prepare to increase your odds. But if you're faced with a situation where you can't get in tight enough quick enough to get the shot, you may very well have to choose between swallowing your pride and cropping to get the desired shot, or being left empty-handed.

I personally crop regularly when I feel that a different aspect ratio suits the dynamics of the composition better. That's just common sense to me; limiting yourself to whatever aspect ratio your camera's sensor happens to be (as a friend of mine does) just seems silly to me. It goes beyond discipline into willfully failing to make the most of the scenes you're presented with. When has a painter only ever used one aspect ratio?

Cropping in two dimensions is obviously a sign that ideally the photo would've been taken tighter. That may not have been possible or the photographer may not have been attentive enough; either way, I still find cropping in two dimensions a valuable tool from time to time. By isolating the parts of the image that do work, it simultaneously draws my attention to the fact that it could've been better in-camera, and I'll try to do better next time. It still trains my eye to analyse a scene, even if it's after the fact rather than in the field. If I'd just bin the shot, that teaching effect wouldn't be as strong for me personally. Others may learn better by binning shots, to each their own.

Will a heavily 2-dimensionally cropped shot make it to my keepers? It will if the content is a moment that I want to preserve. When trying to make "good" images just out of my love for photography, without a strong emotional connection to recording / preserving this particular content / moment in time and place, I can afford to be more picky and bin images that I didn't get quite right.
 
Last edited:
And it sounds ridiculous to the point of absurdity to suggest, on a photography forum, that learning how better to use one's equipment is, in any way, "elitists snob crap
I never said or implied learning how to better use one’s gear is elitist snob crap. I said that the quote you posted is. And have already pointed out examples of when cropping is used. The attitude of the quote you posted is the same attitude as those who say you’re a rank amateur if you can’t shoot in jpg and get everything perfect in camera. All of it is tools available to the photographer. And trying to call anyone an amateur for using any tool is elitism.
 
"Heavy cropping is a sign of a rank amateur who is too lazy to compose shots in the viewfinder. These shooters often use wider-than-optimal focal lengths and then attempt to correct compositions by cropping away parts of the subject they don’t want. But reducing a 4608 x 3456 pixel image to 2400 x 1800 pixels actually discards three quarters of the pixels, which reduces image quality."


Not that I do much cropping, but the best of the best film photographers certainly cropped their images.
I would discount the entire website as worthless based on that one statement.
This statement on the part of the online magazine demonstrates "Worthless advice from yet another Internet Expert" that should be automatically discounted. The world, civilization, and photography did not begin with the World Wide Web and Digital cameras. Pick up a book made by the best of the best photographers and then find a copy of the uncropped photograph. Heavy Cropping on many of the best known. In the digital world- it was not possible to do much cropping on early cameras with limited resolution. 6MPixel cameras with a 50mm lens became 1.5MPixel cameras when enlarged for the equivalent FOV of a 100mm lens. These days- Full-Frame cameras in the 40MPixel range become 10MPixels when enlarged in the same manner. The equipment changes. Change from 35mm Kodak Ektar 25 to low-pixel count sensors meant you could not crop the image. Change from low pixel count (6MPixels and under) to 40MPixel and higher count, you can. Hurray, "Cropping", a fundamental tool of the Professional Photographer of the Golden Age of Photography is given back to photographers using digital cameras. If anyone wants to thank the people that built the first 100MPixel camera, let me know. It was monochrome. The print from it was really good, took a conference room table to lay it out 22 years ago.
 
Last edited:
I actually had a couple of sweatshirts printed that said "I Do Not Crop!" on the back. I still own the shirts, but I had the back writing removed (not the logo, though; it states "APE" - (A)mateur (P)hotography (E)nthusiast; still fully with that) - because boy, was I wrong!

More often than not, it's the crop that makes the image. Of course, if I can get it exactly right by framing, I'm happy - but I was stupid to think that anyone would ever be able to nail every shot s/he takes. None of the pros are. And one of the pros who was most adamant about not wasting a single pixel still did crop to achieve the image he wanted, sometimes removing half of the image or more to get there.

Because in the end, it's the image that counts, and the image is the one shown, not the one taken.

Of course, YMMV, and showing only SOOC is fine if you like it that way, but I can't remember a single image I used SOOC over the last couple of years. Often, the adjustments are minor and so trivial I might have done without them, but it's my choice to make my image look the way I want instead of accepting some default or recipe done by someone else. Adjusting angles and cropping are a natural part of that; usually slight or to aspect ratio only, but, in rare cases, heavy to salvage a subject I couldn't take a more convincing image of and/or can't take another image of any time soon. The reason is simple, If I see what I did wrong and I can mend it, I will. Why wouldn't I?

We all know that we could make it so that nobody could ever find out (by stripping all EXIF data) and fool everyone into having to believe that it was done in-camera (slightly resized, maybe?). I'm not going to do that because it's immaterial. I. Show. My. Image. Period.

Summing up: Photography is making the image. The whole image. The way to the image is your way - just as others have theirs. To believe that there's only the one, well ... Let's just say that that's done in other contexts, and it's the main reason most of them are banned on this board.

M.
 
g1a.jpg


Nikon F2a, Nikkor-NC 24mm F2.8, Panatomic-X. Hand-Held. 1978.
When I printed this shot I filed down the edges of the negative carrier to get the full-frame to print. Turns out with wide-angle lenses, the image projects around the shutter gate and onto the negative. This was one of those times. Most digital cameras do the same thing- crop out the outer 6 columns and rows or so.

Cropping is a tool, like dodging and burning, like contrast adjustment, and color balance. High-resolution sensors makes it possible to use cropping again. Understanding how to use it to present a better image is what is important. Discounting it as a "rank amateur tool" shows absolute ignorance on the part of the author.
 
I love the feature and convenience. It can save you on a miss, it can add a new dimension/look to a scene that you thought would work but worked better when you got home.

For me, it's nearly as nice a feature as IBIS and excellent eye-AF.
Not critical but all very nice.
 
My own .02 or two cents is a bit on the eclectic side.

First and foremost, though I've been taking (and trying to take) photographs for decades and decades, there's no question, in my own mind, at least, of what kind of a 'photographer' I am: I am definitely an amateur. Probably a rank amateur as well, depending on one's definitions (of both the word 'rank' and the word 'amateur'). I've always been fascinated by the process of trying to take pictures - and the related processes of trying to either a) see what I have taken, or b) modify what I have taken in some way or ways that somehow make sense to me at the time. Garry Winogrand's quote - "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed" - has really become something of a mantra for me. But...

What does all that have to do with cropping, or not cropping? Nothing and everything. For me, it's all personal and subjective and related to how I might be feeling on any given day, week, month or year. BUT... for quite a few years (and decades even) I was entranced by the philosophy, or ethos, of trying to never ever crop any of my photos. Because, or so the theory went, there (supposedly!) is (or might be) some intrinsic value in your photo as a document of a sliver of a fraction of a moment in time - and (somehow, I can't remember how) there was supposedly a value in just preserving that moment, or that image, exactly as it was at the moment you press the shutter. There used to be a whole movement about the supposed or perceived 'value' of printing your 35mm image in such a way that it included the frame lines of the film just beyond the negative - as some sort of existential proof that you hadn't altered that one moment you were documenting. (Ironically, I think this movement was also related to another, seemingly inimical photography philosophy, having to do with the perceived purity of 'snapshots' - literally moments just 'snapped' or frozen out of time.)

Thinking about it all reminds me of the occasional mad passions of young undergraduates debating weighty questions of philosophy, of literature, of art, of life, trying to find the 'meaning' or 'purpose' hidden in them. There was definitely some of that in my (relatively mindless) attempts to shoot just the full frame and never, ever crop. And, of course, if you allow yourself to 'believe in' some of that, it can be... immensely entertaining (from a certain perspective, at least). (And, confession follows, I used to be one of those mad, irrationally passionate undergraduates myself, once upon a time... so I can relate.)

Now, after still more years and decades of taking photographs, I've allowed myself to evolve or mature or (pick the verb of your choice) to explore and often embrace the possibilities of cropping my images. For about a million different reasons, which tend to vary from photo to photo.(And definitely including the reason Chris - @MountainMan79 - mentioned, about wildlife photographers needing to crop. Most of my images or photos of birds or animals or insects tend to improve radically with some cropping. Although, strangely, some don't. But that's another kettle of metaphorical fish...) So...

Long story short, cropping has become part of the (always surprising) magic of photography for me. But, paradoxically (old habits die hard), there are times when the ethos or notion of preserving a photo exactly as it was (framing, lighting, whatever) at the moment I pressed the shutter... also resonates for me. I'm full of contradictions - which, coming round full circle, is one of the cool things about just being an 'amateur' photographer. Allowing myself the freedom to try or do things that appeal to me, without having the onus of needing to shoot or develop or print something 'the right way' for my client or boss. And, coming back to Peter's (@Petach) original and thought-provoking first post, about the need (or lack thereof) of megapixels... well, I'm all over the map on that one. Part of me doesn't care about the relationship between megapixels and so-called image quality, before or after cropping. It's a non-issue. But also, either paradoxically or perversely (or pick the adverb of your choice), I've got to admit that the resolution of certain images I've taken with newer, higher resolution cameras (specifically my Pentax KP and my Fuji X-T5) inhabit such a different universe than those I took years ago with my old small-sensored Olympus C-8080 (or those I still take with its smaller sibling, the C-7070) that... it's a lot more fun and rewarding to crop digital negatives from the newer ones. Which is basically what Matt (@MoonMind) was saying.

Short version of the preceding: it can be fun and rewarding, to be both a rank amateur - and occasionally 'just lazy'. (But. if I had to make my living from my photography, I might repudiate everything I've just said :hiding:...)
 
Last edited:
Commercial/editorial photographers crop all the time, their photos are certainly cropped when published in magazines to fit the layout design of each page.

I also used to hear that 'real' photographers only need one shot to capture the moment, aka the HCB 'decisive moment'. They say if you need to take multiple shots, you're sloppy and an amateur. Well, sports photographers take multiple shots all the time. When your living depends on capturing the magic shot, you're not going to leave it up to chance. Same goes with bird photographers, and even studio photographers shooting models. They take shot after shot after shot, click-click-click-click. If you look at a professional photographer's contact sheet, that shit's often all over the place. It's not an exact science. And you see them pour over the sheets with a loupe to pick out the best ones, and even they might still crop.

But I came to stills photography from the filmmaking side of things where aspect ratio is all over the place. I used to 'see' in 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 for example, and would often crop my stills photos to reproduce what I see in my filmmaking mind's eye. I go through phases where I loathe the standard photography aspect ratio of 4:3 or 3:2. It's too boxy-square for me sometimes.

Cropping is just another tool in a photographer's toolbox.
 
Well whaddya know - that famous Decisive Moment by HCB was a crop.

"What's also interesting is Place de l'Europe is one of the few photographs that Cartier-Bresson ever chose to crop. As he was passing by he put his camera In between planks in a way that the fence blocked his viewfinder completely, together with a part of his lens, and took the photo."


Have a look at the original uncropped photo here:


Also look at how photographers select and sometimes visually crop their photos straight out of their contact sheets:

 
The point that I think a lot of us are making is that we've mostly come to cropping via the longer road, not the (maybe imaginary) short road of the rank amateur who crops the hell out of their images to cover for bad technique. The longer road is working really hard to make the frame right in-camera, and even (in my case) resisting cropping for a long time. And then, finally finding that cropping is another really useful tool in the toolbox. When you have something of a) a creative vision or theme, or b) a very workmanlike need to obtain specific subjects in a specific way, then you need to utilize cropping.

None of this precludes the photographic discipline or zen or practice of composing carefully and avoiding cropping. I use that technique all the time, to keep my skills sharp and hopefully sharpen them even more. There's something pure about one focal length, zero cropping, and all the time and attention you can spare to get photos as right as may be at the time of exposure. That's great, I really enjoy it (especially with a fifty!).

But, the "crop not, lest ye be inauthentic" attitude is beginner nonsense. And I stand by that. Important for beginners not even so much to correct their process as to be a sort of mantra that gives them a sense of belonging and direction in their pursuit of improvement.
 
Real professional photographers know how to effectively use cropping to present a better image. I'm looking at "This is War" by David Douglas Duncan, First Edition. One of the most iconic portraits in history is a tight crop from the original negative. This print of it is proudly displayed in the Marine Museum at Quantico, and is how it appears in the book. I also have a book on the Life Photographers that shows the uncropped version. No coincidence that I used a Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.5 to take the below picture. DDD used a Leica IIIc with Nikkor 5cm F1.5 and 13.5cm F4, later replaced with the 13.5cm F3.5.

L1001839.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)


I really need to modify my Fortran Code to let me rewrite the EXIF data for lens used on my Leica. Will pick out and overwrite "UndefinedTag:0xA434" => "Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 (II)" with
"Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.5"

So when people state things such as "Heavy cropping is the tool of rank amateurs" I have to ask myself "nobody can be that ignorant to make such statements, why are they saying it?" Mostly because it means having to use a larger format camera. Most professionals shot large format, 35mm was "Miniature". As film and optics were improved, more photographers moved over to it.

nikons2_ad.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)



Taken with a 1.3MPixel full-frame Nikon E3. Not many pixels for cropping digital images 25 years ago.

Now, with more pixels available in cameras- Cropping can be used with Digital images as they have always been used by Professional film photographers. Now, if those film photographers were shooting Minox, 16mm SUB-miniature, or 110- they tended to not crop the image. They would grab the 35mm camera or medium format.
 
Last edited:
There is almost no need for cropping if you use a 1 inch camera from Sony or Panasonic?
Compact, low weight, affordable. No expensive glass needed.
Right or...wrong?
Looking forward to replies, thanks.
 
Effective cropping, whether with film or digital, is going to be limited by the resolution of the recorded image. My Minolta 16-II with its 22mm lens could record the same image as my Minolta Hi-Matic 9 with the 45mm lens. The HM-9 negative was much easier to work with in the Darkroom. A 1" digital camera is going to have an upper limit in resolution due to the optics and sensor that is exceeded by more than a factor of two with a 35mm format digital camera.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top