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Archive 2015 · How much do you crop?

  
 
gjbpro1
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · How much do you crop?


I'm fairly new to wildlife photography; and I'm using a new Canon 7D2 along with a Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS w/ 1.4ex. I just can't get close enough to get a good full frame shot, so I have to crop. Sometime as much as 50-70% which is far too much. When I see such great BIF images on this sight, I wonder how much cropping is acceptable? And how much to crop not just for web use but to make quality enlargements, like 13x19? Any thoughts?


Jan 08, 2015 at 08:46 AM
Christian H
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · How much do you crop?


In my experience - and with the aid of ACR's fairly good upscaling algorithm - I can crop a 36 mp file down to around 10 mp without things falling apart too much.

tricolored heron by Christian Hunold, on Flickr


For shits and giggles I recently did a 4 mp crop from a 24 mp DX file. You can still make out some details, but I wouldn't want to print something like this bigger than a postcard.

carolina wren by Christian Hunold, on Flickr



Jan 08, 2015 at 09:26 AM
gjbpro1
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · How much do you crop?


Thanks for your response. Nice images by the way. I have just been cropping in Lightroom and saving as a tiff. Will ARC do a better job?


Jan 08, 2015 at 09:49 AM
Christian H
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · How much do you crop?


I'm not familiar with Lightroom, but ACR's upscaling function has been helpful to me.


Jan 08, 2015 at 10:24 AM
AvianScott
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · How much do you crop?


I often crop, but generally not more than 50%.


Jan 08, 2015 at 12:01 PM
morris
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · How much do you crop?


It depends on the image. 2x is easy, 4x only on the best images


Jan 08, 2015 at 01:35 PM
GSteele
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · How much do you crop?


I think morris has presented a good rule-of-thumb on cropping combined with quality. If the picture is fuzzy, it will not crop well at all.

Christian H has some good examples here on cropping. His first photo on my screen measures 9.25 x 6.125 on my screen. It is sized such that I can sit in my chair and enjoy it on my screen. Now, if I double the size (about your requested size of 13x19) of his picture I need to sit further away to get the same feel from it. So, you need to determine what will be the normal viewing distance that your picture will be seen from. In this example the probable viewing distance would be at least twice the viewing distance of the picture on your computer.

If you get someone pixel peeping and complains, just tell them to get a life! Take pictures for your enjoyment, not for someone else's. Forget what the family and friends tell you about your work, it's when a perfect stranger sees one of your photos and ask who took that, it makes everything worth while.

Your dilemma I think, is more about how to get closer to your subject with the equipment on hand! SOME, NOT ALL, people may use blinds and/or bait their subjects, to get them within range for a nice sharp picture. There are all kinds of ways to do this and have the subject look like it is in the wild or you can also go out into the wild and setup a area to accomplish the same thing as well.

Heck, I have seen some photos here, where the person should have provided the birds some napkins so they could wipe the suet off their beaks and facial hairs. I not saying there is anything wrong with it, all I am saying is this is how sometimes you wonder how did someone get that shot, it isn't always being in the right place at the right time.

Gary




Jan 08, 2015 at 04:28 PM
psharvic
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · How much do you crop?


I crop to get the comp I want. If the sharpness doesn't cut it the picture usually gets trashed.


Jan 08, 2015 at 04:47 PM
Imagemaster
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · How much do you crop?


How much cropping is acceptable is up to you and nobody else. Crop as much as you want if you are happy with the final image. Upscaling is not some magic solution to overcropping.


Jan 08, 2015 at 08:49 PM
rcm123
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · How much do you crop?


psharvic wrote:
I crop to get the comp I want. If the sharpness doesn't cut it the picture usually gets trashed.


+1



Jan 08, 2015 at 09:34 PM
gjbpro1
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · How much do you crop?


Thanks for all this great advice! I think I need to improve my technique in shooting to get the sharpest image possible, and to get closer to the subject or draw the subject closer to me. I've noticed too I need to keep the ISO as low as possible; noise just seems to be exaggerated when I crop too much and I like to keep NR to a minimum. Like Imagemaster said...I'm the one that should be happy with the final image. Thanks again to all!


Jan 08, 2015 at 10:03 PM
RandyR
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · How much do you crop?


gjbpro1 wrote:
Thanks for your response. Nice images by the way. I have just been cropping in Lightroom and saving as a tiff. Will ARC do a better job?


ACR is in LR so it's the same code and functions and they both crop the same (LR & CS6)
A bigger factor is how many mp-s the camera/file are



Jan 09, 2015 at 04:00 AM
kmunroe
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · How much do you crop?


i use both a 1.4xIII and 2xIII on my 300 /2.8.. the IQ with the new 2xIII is much better than my old 2xII.. and the IQ will hold up better when you don't have to crop so much


Jan 09, 2015 at 04:30 AM
gjbpro1
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · How much do you crop?


kmunroe wrote:
i use both a 1.4xIII and 2xIII on my 300 /2.8.. the IQ with the new 2xIII is much better than my old 2xII.. and the IQ will hold up better when you don't have to crop so much


That sounds like a good idea. I'll have to rent one and give it a try. We have a rental place here and I can rent one for about $8 a day. Someone told me the 2x was not very good so I never tried it. Maybe he was using version 2.

Thanks



Jan 09, 2015 at 07:01 AM
gjbpro1
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · How much do you crop?


RandyR wrote:
ACR is in LR so it's the same code and functions and they both crop the same (LR & CS6)
A bigger factor is how many mp-s the camera/file are


I was wondering about that. I took a photo of a Hairy Woodpecker the other day and after cropping the image and export in Tiff the file sizes was 22 mp and it was pretty sharp. The crop was about 40% of the original file.

Thanks



Jan 09, 2015 at 07:07 AM
Tim Kuhn
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · How much do you crop?


Christian H wrote:
I'm not familiar with Lightroom, but ACR's upscaling function has been helpful to me.


FYI; Lightroom uses ACR. Photoshop raw and Lightroom are both ACR, it's just skinned differently.

Tim




Jan 09, 2015 at 08:28 AM





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