Cropping

[BillN]

Cropping

PP software now lets you crop very easily. I now find that I crop more and more and with my newly acquired M8 I find that it is a regular event as the cam has a fixed lens and also, (until I get used to the thing), what you see in the RF is not exactly what you get when you download the image.

Here are a couple of my recent shots. They have been reduced in quality, but as they were taken at ISO160, even small crops come out at good quality.
What do you think of the two images and how would you crop them, I have posted a crop in another thread. Also for you to see the quality of a small crop of a shot taken at ISO160, I have included one.

 

[pdh]

Cropping can become an obsessive-compulsive disorder and I have to stop myself short sometimes before I get paralysed ... Streetshooter's advice in a thread a while back was (I paraphrase) crop in the viewfinder not in PP ... anyhoo, my immediate response to yours was that I'd crop #1 hard to remove the "distracting" partial lower window, until I looked at it for more than a moment and noticed how it gave the whole image fantastic movement (as if the bust is going up in a 'paternoster' lift!) ... as for #2, I find the cutting off of the top jarring, and #3 I like save that I would crop in a few percent from the bottom LH corner ... there'll be all sorts of "rules" for cropping but ...

 

[JCD]

I like shot #1, but as pdh said, I also would have removed the partial lower window; to me, cropping is not the best way to achieve a good composition, but sometimes it's the only one

 

[Streetshooter]

Bill, I agree with the 2 awake shooters above......

 

[BillN]

Thanks, I am aware that you should "crop in the VF" if you can, but with compact cams you effectively crop if you use the tele function - as on the S95, for example, the crop can be a digital crop - as I pointed out with certain cams the VF does not give you want you expect and also in many cases you cannot just move back or forward to "crop in the VF"

The small "head" (a crop from the first image), that I posted above was not a "crop" that I suggested using it was to show have far you can crop and still get an acceptable resolution.

These are my original crops that I posted in another thread - which I am not quite happy with:

 

[pdh]

yep, I realised about #3 Bill, but it is a nice image in it's own right and didn't understand you weren't looking for comments on it. Nor was my offering Streetshooter's perspective on things as critical of those who don't or can't crop in the camera ... especially as I find that skill hard to master myself.

 

[BillN]

yep, I realised about #3 Bill, but it is a nice image in it's own right and didn't understand you weren't looking for comments on it. Nor was my offering Streetshooter's perspective on things as critical of those who don't or can't crop in the camera ... especially as I find that skill hard to master myself.

Thanks, pdh, I tend to crop most images these days- at least a little - especially if I have taken it quickly, because of the circumstances - (i.e. my attempts at "street").

The digital media also encourages multiple image taking and I have been experimenting recently with "exposing to the right" - which seem to be one of the current "in terms"

PP in LR has also become a little addictive - white balance, straightening, a little sharpening or the opposite, sometime saturation etc., etc., and also I have recently started using Nik software to "improve" my output - I regard cropping in the same way as any PP operation.

Must stop calling you pdh?

Cheers