Cropping in camera vs. after the fact
Spent a morning last week at a lakefront where the far shore was doing something beautiful in the fog, but I couldn't get closer without wading in. Got me thinking about something I keep going back and forth on.
When I frame tight in the viewfinder, it feels like a decision. When I crop later on a scan, it feels like a correction. But if we're honest, the result is the same: you're working with less of the negative (or less of the sensor, for those shooting digital). The final image doesn't know whether you committed at the moment of exposure or trimmed afterward. Optically, neither approach adds detail that wasn't there.
I used to be pretty rigid about "get it right in camera" as some kind of discipline badge. Then I realized I was just punishing myself for not owning a longer lens, and a good crop from a well exposed frame held up fine in print.
Do you actually approach these two differently in your workflow, or have you landed on them being the same thing with different emotional weight? Curious how this plays out for people across different mediums and processes.
@Tavares Gibson I haven't ever worried too much about either, to be honest. I've never had a lot of equipment, so I've had to use what I had available most of the time. If I get a great image with my 24-70 that needs a little cropping, where my 90-200 would have jammed what I was photographing, I'll happily crop. There have certainly been times where I wished later that I'd used a different lens because the crop didn't turn out well; the usual examples are floral closeups that ended up with too much background distraction and a macro lens would have been a great help.