Crop Later or When Shooting Actual Photo?

In my attempts to get good shots I've been trying to crop with my actual shot instead of in post production. My thinking is that I'm saving work later on, but now I'm rethinking that because I may be limiting myself later on. What are your thoughts on the subject? I'm using a full frame Mark 3, not a crop sensor camera.

Why should you be limited by either/or? Frame the way you feel is best for the image. Every once in a while, shoot a wider "Safety shot". It's just a good practice.

goalerjones wrote in post #18677406
In my attempts to get good shots I've been trying to crop with my actual shot instead of in post production. My thinking is that I'm saving work later on, but now I'm rethinking that because I may be limiting myself later on. What are your thoughts on the subject? I'm using a full frame Mark 3, not a crop sensor camera.

Do you mean compose in camera? I don't know if I'd call filling the frame "cropping".

Filling the frame gets you more resolution andless noise at the same ISO, and might involve shallower DOF, depending on how you fill it. Staying further back or using a shorter focal length gives you more latitude to compose.

There's no right or wrong here; just a trade-off.

The DOF was definitely one of the issues I was concerned about.

I take a photo of the subject, often with intention of cropping out part(s)
You can't change the aspect ratio to fit each photo (well not readily or often just can't).

Then there's photos that show the whole, but you can crop the area you want to highlight, and often it's sufficient for the task.

Lenses come in differing quality and influences the outcome.
Dad always said 'you can't make a silk purse from a sows ear'. That's applicable to much of life, photography included.

Pick a subject and experiment. Then another with differing parameters.
See for yourself what works, but more importantly suits you, your style.

Remember you often only get one crack at it.
Don't rue an event later.

goalerjones wrote in post #18677406
In my attempts to get good shots I've been trying to crop with my actual shot instead of in post production. My thinking is that I'm saving work later on, but now I'm rethinking that because I may be limiting myself later on.

I try to frame shots so that they won't need cropping later, not to save work, but as a kind of discipline to force myself to improve at seeing, paying attention to everything that's there, getting it right the first time. Does a utility pole off to the side destroy the balance in the whole scene? Then I'd better notice it while shooting, not after I get home.

Now, the native ratio of the G15 is 4:3, and I usually want a "fatter" rectangle than that. I'll plan to crop a little off one or both sides to get 5:4 or so. I allow for that when shooting. Some shots are vertical, others I may want to crop to squares, and so on. But generally I try not to back up and include extra stuff in the frame just in case–unless I have to because a subject is moving.

What? She's serious about compositions and she doesn't even have a DSLR? Yeah.

Same as Oh Look. Wherever possible I compose the image in camera as I want the end product to be.

The flip side of this is output. If you compose it in camera are you printing as composed or adapting to a different aspect ratio?

I compose for how I want the end product to look. Sure, sometimes a minor crop or straightening is needed, but those are the exception.

That's not to say I don't often compose for a crop. I use 5:4 and 1:1 (square) a lot and in fact generally prefer those aspect ratios to 3:2. If I plan to do that I use the gridlines in my viewfinder to help me get close to what I want for those particular aspect ratios.

I'm a big fan of get it right in the can first, and shoot tight, fill the frame. and for 32 years this worked for me well. Then I was asked to deliver most of my work 16x9 to be presented electronically, and all of a sudden I had issues. When you shoot to fill the frame top to bottom, you are later confronted with an uncomfortable decisions later when moving to 16x9. So now I shoot looser.

And honestly with the lowest camera I shoot with right now being 24 mpx (6,000 pixels across), the other being 42 mpx, the extra space hasn't been an issue from the cropped image. Again, what I am being asked to shoot for is 4k monitors. So I have lots of extra headroom in the files to play with. I now leave about a 20% buffer all the way around the image to give me extra latitude.

It's whats working for me now.

Fifty years ago when I got serious about photography I shot a lot of transparencies (slides) - a projected slide was the only way to get a great image other than very expensive large size prints. When you shoot slides you don't get a chance to process later, so it's necessary to compose carefully in the viewfinder and frame the desired content tightly.

It's a habit for me even now - a bad habit. A hard-to-break bad habit. I'm with Croasdail - if I frame tightly I lose the ability to adjust aspect ratio for prints, video, or any other medium that's not a 3:2 format.

Modern SLRs ((even my ancient 50D) have higher resolution than can be used for video. Lots of room for cropping with no loss of quality, even for most largish prints.

I try to remember, once I've reflexively composed tightly in the viewfinder, to zoom out a bit - maybe 20%.

-js

goalerjones wrote in post #18677453
The DOF was definitely one of the issues I was concerned about.

One consideration so often overlooked (or simply not undertood!) is the fact that if you crop tightly in camera vs. crop to the same tightness in postprocessing and then print the two, the resulting DOF of both prints is IDENTICAL

The 'issue' of cropping in camera is that whenever you make a different aspect ratio print from that shot, the cropping has to change and can 'ruin' the idealized crop which you visualized in the viewfinder to some degree.

...a good practice which increases the flexibility of altering the aspect ratio of the final print to make it different than the original capture aspect ratio.

I usually find it a compromise between the two. I like to frame somewhat tight to capture as much resolution as possible but I always leave a little wiggle room for editing and different aspect ratios.

I do not know if it is "right" or "wrong" but I crop in the camera using the appropriate lens. My fear (perhaps unfounded) is that if I crop an image in post-processing, I'll end up with pixelated images that are not sharp.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18677536
. . . Wherever possible I compose the image in camera as I want the end product to be.

That was me a few years ago. The need to produce final output in various aspects has me shooting a bit looser. Except when I revert.

Slightly related: It seems our eyes and brain only want to deal with a relatively small FOV. http://neuronresearch.​net/vision/reading/fov​eola.htm