To add to the above...
I'm currently writing a BIF book and it discusses cropping quite a bit. One of the problems with cropping is that the heavier you crop, the worse the ISO looks upon output. In other words, if I print an 16x20 from a full frame shot vs one that's heavily cropped, even if I have the pixels to do it, the heavier crop will show far more noise a the same output size since I have to enlarge each pixel more. I made this little graphic to help illustrate this in a more visual way. Note that the heavier you crop, the faster things get noisy.
View attachment 18333
The upshot is that if you're gonna have to crop, drop your ISO to help keep the noise in check and retain more detail. However, nothing is going to replace getting close enough in the first place. All we can do is damage control
In addition, check out my cropping article. It talks about what happens when you crop and gives suggestions to overcome those issues.
I see it all the time – lens jockeys hacking off pixels and tossing them out like they were last week’s kitty litter. It pains me to witness such rampant cropping with so little regard for the consequences – especially since I know how potentially devastating it is to a photo. What really makes...
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Hi Steve.
Hurry up with the book. The focus and metering books helped me immensely in my beginning and I just revisited the Nikon autofocus book last week. I got my first owl shots yesterday and used high iso for the first time just because I was out of light and excited. Lol. They did beat a blank but some not pretty. Lol. I'm sure I can pick up a few tricks from your book. What's the hold up? Lol lol
. Just kidding. Nice to know it's coming.