Bill Pierce
Well-known
Our last thread on megapixel counts turned, in good part, to a discussion of cropping. At the extremes of opinion were the thought that cropping was a heinous sin or liberating and life changing. A look at the history of cropping may produce a more middle of the road perspective.
Obviously daguerreotypes weren’t cropped. Even when negative-positive processes came about, the paper’s sensitivity was such that contact printing, not enlarging, ruled the day. Although it’s not an exact parallel, anybody who has made platinum prints by exposing the contact frame to bright sunlight will get the idea. If you wanted a big print, you used a big camera. If you wanted a very big print, you used a very big camera. Even when enlargers that could handle up to 8x10 sheet film and enlarging paper came around, there were photographers who preferred to contact print their negatives. Although Weston is known for his 8x10 work, he often shot portraits with a 4x5 camera and presented them as 4x5 inch contact prints. When you have a relatively small print to begin with, in general you don’t crop. It would have to be said that when Walker Evans was shooting for the Farm Security Association, he did crop a few of his 8x10 contact prints with scissors.
However, as technology improved, most photographers moved both to smaller cameras and bigger enlarged prints. You certainly didn’t have to crop, but you could. And in many cases there would be no significant loss in print quality. While many photographers are aware that Ansel Adams moved from 8x10 to 4x5 and produced beautiful work, fewer are aware that in later years he also shot 2 1/4.
And, in the news business, cropping was standard. You used a 4x5 Speed Graphic with a modest wide angle and when you needed to, as in portraiture and a lot of news events, you cropped rather than change lenses. This philosophy extended even to sports where the wire associations with permanent positions at sports arenas had cameras like 5x7 single lens reflex Graflexes with 20 to 40 inch lenses. And those images were highly cropped before they appeared in your newspaper or magazine. (I do remember when I got my first 35mm camera the local AP photographer said, "What are you going to do with that - sneak it into courtrooms?)
And those square twin-lens reflexes that were becoming popular, (They have a square format because it’s a little difficult to turn them 90 degrees and still use the reflex finder.) in their heyday, everybody cropped those images to the popular 8x10 and 11x14 print sizes - choosing a horizontal or vertical crop that best suited the image.
So, where did this “no crop” philosophy come from? In 1913 Oscar Barnack made some prototypes of a small camera using 35mm film. In 1923 Leitz introduced the camera which became a success after being shown at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair.
Initially, if you wanted decent image quality with these cameras, you shot slow film and made relatively small uncropped prints. As time passed you shot faster films and made bigger prints, but you kept image quality up by never cropping needlessly. The same philosophy certainly held true with most early digital cameras. And in both cases for some folks these philosophies grew more extreme. They went from a practical concern to an esthetic mandate - do not crop. And yet the history of photography gives its blessings to cropping when possible - if it can, without lowering quality, make shooting simpler or the image esthetically better. A high megapixel count in recent and affordable digital cameras makes that possible.
Your thoughts?
Obviously daguerreotypes weren’t cropped. Even when negative-positive processes came about, the paper’s sensitivity was such that contact printing, not enlarging, ruled the day. Although it’s not an exact parallel, anybody who has made platinum prints by exposing the contact frame to bright sunlight will get the idea. If you wanted a big print, you used a big camera. If you wanted a very big print, you used a very big camera. Even when enlargers that could handle up to 8x10 sheet film and enlarging paper came around, there were photographers who preferred to contact print their negatives. Although Weston is known for his 8x10 work, he often shot portraits with a 4x5 camera and presented them as 4x5 inch contact prints. When you have a relatively small print to begin with, in general you don’t crop. It would have to be said that when Walker Evans was shooting for the Farm Security Association, he did crop a few of his 8x10 contact prints with scissors.
However, as technology improved, most photographers moved both to smaller cameras and bigger enlarged prints. You certainly didn’t have to crop, but you could. And in many cases there would be no significant loss in print quality. While many photographers are aware that Ansel Adams moved from 8x10 to 4x5 and produced beautiful work, fewer are aware that in later years he also shot 2 1/4.
And, in the news business, cropping was standard. You used a 4x5 Speed Graphic with a modest wide angle and when you needed to, as in portraiture and a lot of news events, you cropped rather than change lenses. This philosophy extended even to sports where the wire associations with permanent positions at sports arenas had cameras like 5x7 single lens reflex Graflexes with 20 to 40 inch lenses. And those images were highly cropped before they appeared in your newspaper or magazine. (I do remember when I got my first 35mm camera the local AP photographer said, "What are you going to do with that - sneak it into courtrooms?)
And those square twin-lens reflexes that were becoming popular, (They have a square format because it’s a little difficult to turn them 90 degrees and still use the reflex finder.) in their heyday, everybody cropped those images to the popular 8x10 and 11x14 print sizes - choosing a horizontal or vertical crop that best suited the image.
So, where did this “no crop” philosophy come from? In 1913 Oscar Barnack made some prototypes of a small camera using 35mm film. In 1923 Leitz introduced the camera which became a success after being shown at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair.
Initially, if you wanted decent image quality with these cameras, you shot slow film and made relatively small uncropped prints. As time passed you shot faster films and made bigger prints, but you kept image quality up by never cropping needlessly. The same philosophy certainly held true with most early digital cameras. And in both cases for some folks these philosophies grew more extreme. They went from a practical concern to an esthetic mandate - do not crop. And yet the history of photography gives its blessings to cropping when possible - if it can, without lowering quality, make shooting simpler or the image esthetically better. A high megapixel count in recent and affordable digital cameras makes that possible.
Your thoughts?
