mikegreenwald wrote:
No matter where you crop, you are destroying pixels - the cropped image loses a part of the background.
That misses the point though. To retain information by creating a photo that has little beyond the portion of the image you want, you need a longer lens.
I greatly prefer leaving the image alone in the camera, and wait until I have it on a large screen, where I can do a better job of judging what should be retained, and what should be removed.
Cropping does not "destroy" pixels. It does not select background pixels and ruin them. I think I know what you are trying to say, but it came out wrong. Cropping "lops off" the perimeter pixels, which include background (above the main subject) and foreground (below the main subject) and left and right edges. If your subject is a landscape, it trims the edges in closer to the center.