Canon Powershot SX50 Cropping: I have a question that I really am not asking for options of my lack of some areas of photography. I come here to learn. With that said please don't...

Chaxl

I have a question that I really am not asking for options of my lack of some areas of photography. I come here to learn. With that said please don't reply if my question is too immature for your taste.

Recently I taught myself about the different aspect ratios and how they may affect different printing sizes, and what I should use to not get edges cut off. Anyway, I am getting more into portraits hoping to start my own side business in the future. Because I am physically challenged and have use of only my right arm, i use a high end Point and Shoot, Canon Powershot SX50, which I love, great camera,in fact I plan to purchaser a bigger external flash, but that's besides the point.

Anyway my Staff who transports me from site to site often suggests that I crop. Now, personally I don't like to crop any of m photos because I'm worried since my camera only has 12mp, cropping would decrease the sharpness. Am I correct?

JR45 Loc: Montgomery County, TX

Don't know if this will help, but here goes.
My first DSLR only had 6mp. I had no trouble printing
8x10's from uncropped JPG images. That camera did not give
me the option of RAW+JPG. Now that I have that option,
I have printed 12x18 from TIFF files cropped to as little as
15% of original.
Do some test shots, and crop to see what they look like.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Chaxl wrote:

I have a question that I really am not asking for ... (show quote)

If you are talking about cropping in an editor, yes, depending on the amount of the crop, and how large the final print may be.
I would suggest you try some images and see how much they may be affected to see any limits you may want to impose on yourself. See what and if it would be acceptable to you or not. My one camera is 15Mp and the other is 5Mp, and I crop both, mostly shooting with the 15Mp camera. My phone is 8Mp.
You might want to try a binary search method on cropping. Start at 50%, then try 25%, then either 12 or 35% depending oh how they look. Then you'll have an idea of what you can get away with.

bleirer

It would depend on what you are doing to display the pictures. For printing, it depends on the viewing distance and how good we think the viewers eyesight is. 300 pixels per inch in really good for even close up viewing, but 200 is also pretty good. It is also possible to resample in programs like Photoshop without losing too much quality. For viewing on the web, around 2000 pixels wide is quite good. So you should crop if it is needed to get to your vision of what the image should be, but also work on improving your composing in camera.

Your camera can record 4000x3000 pixels. So printing 9x12 or 11x14 would be no problem, if you crop to 2000 x 1500 you can still print 5x7 or 8x10. 2000x1500 would still be really good for the web.

Chaxl

Awesome suggestions and very knowledgeable. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Before I moved from film to digital, I determined that 6mp was needed to preserve the information in pictures I was taking. Since I did make an 8 x 10 portrait during that time, like @JR45 I would be comfortable making portraits at least 8” x 10” in size by cropping half the pixels from your image.

Haydon

Just be careful how much you crop/PP with the SX50. The files do not stand up well if you push them hard. I've owned that camera for several years now and learned you run into limitations quickly. It's a great camera in good light. I've shot it in a studio environment with radio controllers (for experimental purposes) and I routinely use a 600EX-RT and trigger combination.

Joe Blow

My first DSLR was an 8 MP Canon. I had few qualms about cropping up to 75% on it.

The biggest reason I crop today is to square the photo. Taking a lot of sports photos, I found many of my shots were slightly crooked and / or off centered.

Often, when you sit down to look at your photos on a computer, they appear different than they did in your viewfinder. You have too much sky, someone is walking into one side of the frame, etc. Cropping those out of the shot can make a huge difference. Also cropping to just one thing in the shot can give you an entirely different photo.

A suggestion is when you crop a photo, save it with a new name. My practice is if the original file is 12345.jpg, I will name the cropped photo 12345-c.jpg. The "-c" tell me that I cropped it. If I dislike the crop (or other editing) I still have the original I can revert to. By just adding a suffix to the original file name, I can trace it back and find other photos from the same shoot.

Good luck

Joe Blow

My first DSLR was an 8 MP Canon. I had few qualms about cropping up to 75% on it.

The biggest reason I crop today is to square the photo. Taking a lot of sports photos, I found many of my shots were slightly crooked and / or off centered.

Often, when you sit down to look at your photos on a computer, they appear different than they did in your viewfinder. You have too much sky, someone is walking into one side of the frame, etc. Cropping those out of the shot can make a huge difference. Also cropping to just one thing in the shot can give you an entirely different photo.

A suggestion is when you crop a photo, save it with a new name. My practice is if the original file is 12345.jpg, I will name the cropped photo 12345-c.jpg. The "-c" tell me that I cropped it. If I dislike the crop (or other editing) I still have the original I can revert to. By just adding a suffix to the original file name, I can trace it back and find other photos from the same shoot.

Good luck

jimbo70 Loc: Orange Park, FL.

I have a SX50 and use it a lot. If you are going to crop do it with the lens before you take the picture not in post processing.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

jimbo70 wrote:

I have a SX50 and use it a lot. If you are going to crop do it with the lens before you take the picture not in post processing.

And if you can't? Or it needs adjustment?
Many time there could be multiple secondary images by cropping the original.
Or you are shooting to cover multiple aspect ratios?

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

I have an SX60--same pixels as the SX50. I have no problem with cropping my images so long as I don't go crazy and crop severely. You’ll have no problem whatsoever with logical cropping.

jrw_mdus Loc: Elk River Basin, Cecil County MD, USA

The canon sx50 is considered a bridge camera nota point and shoot in that it has full control and a good zoom. There is a new group "Bridge Camera Show Case" on hedgehog that might be of interest to you.

jimbo70 Loc: Orange Park, FL.

When I said crop with the lens I should have also said in good light you can do some cropping but not much. I took this photo using the extended (digital) crop so the camera is capable if you are careful.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

jimbo70 wrote:

When I said crop with the lens I should have also said in good light you can do some cropping but not much. I took this photo using the extended (digital) crop so the camera is capable if you are careful.

Well done.