[Leica] The myths of crop factor

[Doug Herr]

Mark Rabiner wrote:

>
>People always spoke of the sanctity of never cropping their pictures. People
>in Magnum even did that. But I suspect it was all about the precious thin
>black borders. A print in the stack with no black border stood out as weak.
>

That was when using film.  The idea was to make the best use of a limited image capture surface because image detail would be overshadowed by grain when enlarged too much.

The 'rules' have changed in the last ten to fifteen years.  Image detail can still be overshadowed by digital noise but the degree of enlargement to reach that point is much greater than with film so the 'no cropping' rule may be ignored more often.

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com
http://doug-herr.fineartamerica.com