The art of the mega-crop
A few years back I started using Genuine Fractals to enlarge photos I’ve had to crop while shooting news. It’s fast, easy and pretty amazing. Now, using the 5DmkII, with its ginormous files, I can make a ridiculous crop and resize it with GF and put it out on the wire with no one the wiser.
Last night I shot the Mrs World Pagaent (yes, “MRS”. Weird. I think they have pageants for everything now. It was a mix of young ladies and, like, their moms, in the same competition. Definitely a touch of “cougar” to the proceedings. And to top it off, Alan Thicke was in the house!!!!). The photographer positions were waaaaay back, and I was shooting mostly with the 5DmkII, 300mm 2.8, and a 1.4x extender. And I was still miles away.
Anyway, check out image #1:
So that’s full-frame out of the camera, iso 1600, un-cropped. But what a nice expression on her face! So let’s crop this sucker like mad! :
So that’s about a 1/20th crop of the full frame, re-sized with GF to keep it publishable. Remarkable. No need to be afraid of the mega-crop anymore. As long as your sharp and exposure is right, you can do really amazing things.
And finally, an outtake while they break for commercial…..
