When you want to get closer to your subject, you have a few different options. Roughly from best to worst those are: getting physically closer, using a longer lens, using a teleconverter, using a crop sensor camera, or cropping in post processing.
If none of the more preferable options are possible, your last resort should be cropping in post processing. The question then becomes, how much cropping is too much?
The honest answer is – as much as you want. Some photographers may tell you cropping is bad, but photography is art and art is completely subjective. If you think something should be cropped, don’t be afraid to do it. If you prefer to hear a more concrete answer, I try to crop less than 50% of the width or height in pixels at the most.
There are still a few things to look out for when you start cropping, and you have to expect quality to deteriorate as you crop further.
Loss of sharpness
With teleconverters (extenders), the sharper your lens is to begin with, the sharper it will be with a teleconverter attached. The same can be said for cropping.
Sharpness is relative to distance (among other things), but generally the closer you get to fine detail the softer it will appear. You can make a huge billboard with a 2 megapixel image, yet it looks sharp because it’s viewed from so far away. This is why you want to zoom into 100% to check sharpness, because even unsharp images can appear sharp from a distance.
6720×4480 pixels (uploaded at 2048px)
3339×2226 pixels (uploaded at 2048px)
More visible noise
When you start cropping in closer, you are effectively “zooming” in on any artifacts in your image – especially noise. If the noise was a small size to begin with, cropping will make it appear larger and more visible in the final displayed image.
Canon 5D Mark IV & 400mm f/2.8L IS
ISO 6400 – f/2.8 – 1/100th
The noise becomes even more apparent when you start to edit the photo, especially if you have to increase exposure.
Uncropped again that noise becomes smaller and less noticeable, even after increasing exposure.
Fewer pixels
With a higher megapixel camera, you will have more pixels to work with when cropping. The more pixels you have on your subject, the better. If you crop in too close, you may start seeing the individual pixels.
Also in order to take advantage of more pixels, your lens quality also has to be capable of resolving detail at a similar resolution. High quality prime lenses can stand up to more cropping than cheaper kit zoom lenses. Sony’s latest high quality lenses are built to work with up to 100 megapixels.
Conclusion
In general I prefer to use cropping as a last resort option to get significantly closer to a subject. If you have to crop in more than 50%, it’s probably best to make it a more environmental shot and not try to get too close.
Ideally I try to only utilize cropping for fine-tuning composition. For a very large print, I will usually crop much less than I would for an image headed to social media and small screens. Images that will be viewed at a small size are best cropped in to appreciate the detail. A subject in an environmental shot can sometimes get lost in the small size.
Workshop updates
If you haven’t had a chance yet, be sure to check out the newly available 2020 Yellowstone workshops here. Two of those workshops have already filled in a couple weeks. I just added two new dates for two and five day May workshops.
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