Low flying seagull

[Desmond Chan]

Micro Nikkor 105mm f2.8 on D700 hand-held. All natural light. ISO 200 f6.3 1/1000s.

Large crop, apparently :)

Comments welcome and thank you for looking !!

[Dave Leroy]

Good looking photo Desmond.

It is a view we don't often see and photograph.

Nice and sharp and pose is spot on. I really like the texture and look of the water.

[Alfred Forns]

I like the top view Unusual angle Web presentation looks good, not a fan of large crops !!! ... btw when the cameras get to 179.4 Megapixels all anyone will need is a 50mm lens and point in the direction of a bird and come up with a winner ... that is my basic objection to large crops even if the quality is the same as an old full frame from less megapixels. Skill rates in my book !!! Not sure what direction are we going :)

Posting wise we can tell if its a large crop not so much from the image quality (at times is superb) but from the dof unless in PhotoShop you do some selective blurring to simulate less dof !! .. can also be done !!

btw the reason I'm so much of the crop thing I just learned a person (high end) which I looked up to .. and he is not on our site ... makes some huge crops from all his images and they get nothing but raves when posted. Agin it is probably just me but I do take pride in coming up with a good chunk of the image in frame, a 50% crop would be a delete at first pass.

Desmond glad you posted this one and hope nobody would think I'm directing this to anyone, I'm just ranting which don't do much :D:) Sorry !

[Desmond Chan]

... makes some huge crops from all his images and they get nothing but raves when posted

I think we all know that we can get away a lot - details, sharpness - if the image is for web presentation only. I know some people who do bird photography with nothing but a 70-200 + TC. With the lack of reach, most of the images they posted are cropped and likely to a large degree, too. I think they knew that their photos would not win any award, but they enjoy going out, photographing birds and sharing their images with their friends on the web. If that's all they want, what's wrong with that? Besides, many people do not print their digital images these days.

Aren't some here on bpn said the reason they wanted a high megapixel camera was cropping? ;)

For this one, I don't plan to print it anything larger than 4x6 :)

Thank you for the comments !

[Harold Davis]

what, were you on a pier shooting down? cool perspective! the reflection looks different. almost looks like an airplane if you use some imagination!:)

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Desmond

Fully agree with all your points. The idea is going out shooting and coming back with something you can be proud of !! I'm sure entering the BBC is not on everybody's mind.

I think when I take issue is when the image is sneaked in to be considered a big deal? I'm I right or wrong? To me it makes no difference since they are not fooling me, it sticks out like a soar thumb !!!

I will post one that is a large crop tomorrow, about half of the frame has been cropped but decided to keep it ... why For me was something unusual, a cormorant eating a Garibaldi fish !!! Will dig up and post tomorrow.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Nice top view of the gull with good feather details and sharpness. Just wish that the reflection did not get distorted too much by the ripple.

As for cropping, I am trying to work for a day so that my most of image is nearly full frame so in the future when there a time of super high megapixel camera I can print a gigantic image that cover the whole room (hopefully the cost of the printing will come down by that time so I don't have to sell my car to do so :D). But also agree that I enjoy taking and share pictures even though it is a large crop, and never intended to print them.

[Ricardo Rodriguez]

As usual, Al, I find your comments valuable and educational. Personally I dislike cropping for anything other than compositional purposes, so I strive to get a full frame image (posted some already), but it's not easy without the big lenses, as Desmond suggests. BTW, I was not aware of the DOF clue to spotting a large crop, so TFS.

[Desmond Chan]

what, were you on a pier shooting down?

I was on a walkway by the harbour. The tide was kind of low that day and the gull was just flying a couple of feet above the water. It was being driven here and there by an adult.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very good points Al,
No question getting the bird larger in the frame yields best results most of the time!!!
I think cropping is one of the advantages digital has brought us and it can open new possibilities if used effectively just like the high ISO. Tight crops will only look good if the original is razor sharp and relatively clean. So do need some skills getting a sharp clean image.

It greatly depends on sensor performance too, for example I can get 20% crops (throw away 80%) from 5DMKII that look very good on this site and 12"X8" prints but when I had the 7D anything tighter than 60% of FF would fall apart because of noise and softness that is associated with small pixels. So I don't think we will see such high pixel densities that you could crop a photo say with a 100mm lens and get acceptable results. The 5DMKII 21 mpixel FF sensor is close to the limits here, smaller pixels and you will lose SNR and diffraction effects kick in so won't be able to crop as tight and get the same IQ.

[Dave Leroy]

Arash,
I have a question and I am not sure if this is the correct forum nor if you will see the question, but here it is.

Using the info in your second paragraph above, and I think I have the math correct and leaving pixel numbers out of it, a 20% crop on ff gives a magnification of 500%.

On the 1.6 crop at 60% crop would give a magnification of 267% or about half of the ff camera.

Is my math/logic correct?

The reason I ask is in our area we are often challenged with overcast conditions and it is hard to get ss up without attracting lots of noise and the MarkIV is double the price of the 5DMKII. Which of course leads to another question, but I am curious about my math.

Thanks,

Dave

[Alfred Forns]

Great question Dave !!! ... waiting for an the answer !!!

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash,
I have a question and I am not sure if this is the correct forum nor if you will see the question, but here it is.

Using the info in your second paragraph above, and I think I have the math correct and leaving pixel numbers out of it, a 20% crop on ff gives a magnification of 500%.

On the 1.6 crop at 60% crop would give a magnification of 267% or about half of the ff camera.

Is my math/logic correct?

The reason I ask is in our area we are often challenged with overcast conditions and it is hard to get ss up without attracting lots of noise and the MarkIV is double the price of the 5DMKII. Which of course leads to another question, but I am curious about my math.

Thanks,
Dave

Hi Dave,
Technically cropping an image is not magnification, it is just getting rid of extra pixels, magnification is when you take the original pixels and make them larger by means of interpolation. What determines reach and number of pixels on a subject is just pixel size (not crop factor). A camera like 7D has pixels that are 2.2 times smaller than 5D so from a fixed distance and with a fixed FL it will give you 2.2 times more pixels on the subject, which on paper would be better. But those pixels are softer and noisier so you cannot crop the image as tightly as you can with the 5D and maintain good acceptable IQ.

The MKIV sensor has pixels that are ~1.29 times smaller than that 5D so in terms of IQ it and ability to make tight crops with good IQ it is very similar to 5D.

Hope this helps

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks for reply Arash.

Poor choice of words on my part and perhaps enlarging would be a better choice than magnification.

It is still very good to know that in your experience a cropped image from 5DMKII with about 5mp's is better quality than a cropped image from 7D with about double the mp's.

Dave