About Cropping Images

I found this article interesting regarding whether or not to crop images. The comments are especially interesting:

https://fstoppers.com/originals/crop-or-not-crop-328904

Joe

I have always found the "never crop" position to be totally idiotic.  Just because one camera is 3x2 and another is 1x1 and another is 6x7 and another is 4x5 and another is 16x9 and another is 65x24 we shouldn't be able to crop that to what works for the picture???  Should I have a separate camera for each?  Should I carry them all in the field?  I have all these crop modes in my Fuji GFX-50S which is natively a 4x3 camera but invoking them means I am cropping the image....  What an incredibly stupid and absurd position....

Not to disagree because I do agree with the above comments , cropping is not a bad technique to be avoided.
But there are some reasons that "do not crop" is so prevalent in some circles when you look at the origin of the phrase.
In the early days of 35mm film when you did more than a 50% crop the image lost significant resolution - hence you were cautioned do not crop. Particularly if your shooting technique was less than optimal. Shutter speeds were typically slow with low ASA/ISO film handheld. Anyone still remember shooting with Kodachrome I ASA of 10 ? Focus distance was frequently estimated till the invention of the rangefinder split image viewfinder that gave more or less accurate distance depending the photographer. So do not DEPEND on cropping became the montra if you wanted good results.
As film technology improved you started to see some cropping of 35mm negatives but not much, remember early on the gold standard was 4x5 or 8x10 film shoot on a tripod with an aperture of f/32, f/45, f/64 to get the needed DOF in a landscape.
Why would a photography instructor insist that the students NOT crop their images? The reason that this is hammered home in class is not that cropping is inherently bad because it's not, it is for a different reason. The instructor wants their students to learn "how to see" in the viewfinder, to so to speak crop while viewing the subject. They want their students to learn "how to frame their subject in the viewfinder, to envision how the finished print will look in their mind's eye. Too many beginning photographers depend on "cropping" as a way of saving a poorly composed image. The instructors want to eliminate this lazy approach of composing images by insisting that they do not crop the image after capture.

Cropping is fine. I don't do it often as I crop in the viewfinder, but I will do it if it will improve the image.

I can see an instructor not wanting his/her students to crop images, so the instructor can see everything the student is seeing when they compose their image.

Do what you have to do to get the image you want.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Sometimes the “never crop” school of thought takes on an arrogant sound, as seen in a few of the comments after the article. I would love to see someone who is so good at it that they can consistently crop BIF or running animals in camera and get a great comp! Low light is another situation where not everything is as easy to “see” in camera. The fact is that many cameras don’t even show the full frame in the viewfinder, so how can you be so good as to see the whole scene in your imagination! With current resolutions, there is a great advantage in being able to crop. One advantage being that you don’t have to approach wildlife and birds quite so closely to fill the frame.
When I shot the image I currently use as my avatar, the lion ran across the road in front of me. I jumped out and layed the lens across the hood of my truck and popped off a few shots. It was my first opportunity with a puma. Every image I shot was horizontal. Vertical would have suited the image better, but it was a situation that required a quick reaction. I got the shot and a vertical crop was easily done after the fact. When viewing the vertical crop I made from it, who would ever know it was shot horizontally?

Joe

With any "set-up" shot where I'm shooting from my tripod (95+% of my shots), I try to crop in camera, but I will generally "unzoom" just a little in order to give me just a wee bit of wiggle room off my composition, and this has come in handy so many times. I would recommend to others as well.

I agree.

I never crop in-camera, always leave a fair amount of wiggle room as Bill says. You never know when something distracting is in the frame at one edge and you need to clone or crop it out. With most of my wildlife shots there is little possibility of composing to your satisfaction in-camera, so I always zoom out a bit these days. There is plenty of resolution with most cameras to allow fairly large prints despite this.

Pradeep