My 35mm lens and cropping

[kivis]

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I have a CV Nokton 35mm f1.5 on my M10 about 85% of the time. Love the profile and ergonomics. Can't I just crop for a 50mm or even a 75mm FOV when desired? What will I be missing over changing lenses?

[rogxwhit]

Pixels.

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[kivis]

Good point but I had perfectly great 8x11 enlargements with an Epson RD-1 at only 6 megapixels.

[Jeff S]

Perspective different compared to moving one’s feet, which is the tendency when switching focal lengths.

Jeff

[costa43]

Compression, perspective, lower mp and this bit is just me and everyone is different here but I think I would lose a bit of the joy of shooting. I can’t imagine “seeing’ an image with a crop in mind. I’d spend too much time thinking about how to frame for a focal length that’s not on my camera! The less I have running around in my mind the better for me 😀

[kivis]

Don't worry I am not ever selling my 50mm or 90mm.

[evikne]

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If you take two images with different focal lengths and same aperture from exactly the same position and just crop the wider image, you won't lose much other than resolution, and maybe some image quality. Perspective and depth of field will be exactly the same.

What's confusing is that with a shorter focal length, it's easy to be tempted to move a little closer to fill the viewfinder. And then you will also change the perspective and depth of field!

Edited February 14 by evikne

[UliWer]

vor 23 Minuten schrieb costa43:

I can’t imagine “seeing’ an image with a crop in mind.

When you look at something and then look through the viewfinder of your camera - you crop. The M viewfinder shows more than 35mm - the frames for 35mm are a crop of your viewfinder's image. 

[costa43]

1 minute ago, UliWer said:

When you look at something and then look through the viewfinder of your camera - you crop. The M viewfinder shows more than 35mm - the frames for 35mm are a crop of your viewfinder's image. 

Yes but you learn to see in the focal length you are using after a while and I enjoy seeing the world in whatever focal length is attached to my camera at the time as opposed to shooting with a crop in mind. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when it comes in useful but I do not think I would enjoy shooting regularly with the intention of cropping. Each to their own of course. 

[TomB_tx]

With the M10 I often just mount a 35 and crop as needed instead of taking a 50 also. On film I used mainly 50, on M10 rarely do.  I find the Summarit 35 f2.5 holds up well to cropping, and suspect your Nokton will too. 

On M9 I did the same with a 35 f1.4 Nokton (for the speed), and while the Summarit is sharper, still got good results cropping the Nokton.

[pgk]

The short answer is that cropping is one way of working if you want to avoid changing lenses.

The long answer is that it depends. For example I have a tendency to shoot wideer angle lenses from a slightly lower viewpoint because otherwise they can at times produce images which look as though they are taken from a slightly unnaturally high viewpoint. Then there is the way you see an image; do you crop after viewing through the the viewfinder, in your head, or simply after garbbing a shot? I tend to visualise images when I am viewing the subject matter, select a lens, then shoot (subject dependant of course), so to me part of my 'workflow' is about selecting a lens. Its not an easy question to answer but for myself I much prefer using different lenses and rarely rop at all (and when I do its usually to correct for slightly angled horizons rather than anything else.

Really its a personal decision. Some people are happy to crop rather than change lenses. I'm not.

[earleygallery]

1 hour ago, kivis said:

Don't worry I am not ever selling my 50mm or 90mm.

As you have those lenses you can try taking the same shot with each and consider the results.

Or, put them away and only use your 35mm, until you get fed up with the idea!

[evikne]

I probably have a different approach to lenses and focal lengths than most people. Before I go out to shoot, I often just put on a lens I want to use for whatever reason, maybe one I haven't used for a while. I rarely change lenses when I'm out. No matter what lens I have on, I always find a way to use it. If the perspective is different than with another lens, so what? Who said the perspective from the other lens was the only right one? This may sound strange to some people, but for me it works just fine.

Edited February 14 by evikne

[rogxwhit]

Lots of cheerfully valid answers above!  For myself, I'm so used to framing in the viewfinder that it's become a discipline I'm pretty glued to.  Sometimes, though, it's productive to distil a different meaning, after the event, by cropping to an altered proportion - eg from 3:2 to letterbox, or whatever.  And yes, there's lots of leeway in 24Mpx for most things. 

The main thing may be to have fun along the way, but the acid test may be to produce something meaningful.  The following questions are 'how?' and 'to whom?'.

🙂

[TomB_tx]

3 hours ago, evikne said:

I probably have a different approach to lenses and focal lengths than most people. Before I go out to shoot, I often just put on a lens I want to use for whatever reason, maybe one I haven't used for a while. I rarely change lenses when I'm out. No matter what lens I have on, I always find a way to use it. If the perspective is different than with another lens, so what? Who said the perspective from the other lens was the only right one? This may sound strange to some people, but for me it works just fine.

Yes - look for the shot that works with the lens.

[dpitt]

12 hours ago, evikne said:

If you take two images with different focal lengths and same aperture from exactly the same position and just crop the wider image, you won't lose much other than resolution, and maybe some image quality. Perspective and depth of field will be exactly the same.

What's confusing is that with a shorter focal length, it's easy to be tempted to move a little closer to fill the viewfinder. And then you will also change the perspective and depth of field!

i.e. that would mean that a picture taken from 3m at F2.0 would be the same for any FL,  no matter which cropped sensor you use?
I can tell you it is not.

One of the things I craved for with my Digilux 2 was more shallow DOF. It had a 4x crop factor, so the 90mm eq was 22,5mm, best opening F2.4 at that FL...
Using an Elmarit 90 F2.8 on FF at the same distance will yield the same FOV, but DOF feels completely different.

Edited February 15 by dpitt

[pippy]

As mentioned by dpitt above the only thing which will change when cropping as long as you don't change position and the resolving power of your lens is up to the task would be D-o-F (and, of course, pixels FWIW). If, however, you tend to shoot at f11 (for instance) and your subject is far enough away such that your chosen aperture gives sufficient D-o-F for your needs there will be no difference at all.

Philip.

[JoshuaRothman]

The Q2 trained me to understand what you lose when you crop. Three things: pixels, bokeh (relative to a longer lens) and lens characteristics around the edges. 

That holds true only as long as you crop from the center. If you crop away from the center of a wide angle lens, you’ll often get some distortion.

Lens characteristics is often why I try to shoot full frame, without cropping. Crop into the middle of an image taken with the 28 Summaron, 35 Steel Rim, etc., and you lose some of the special sauce that makes those images beautiful.

With a hyper-modern lens that’s sharp edge to edge with minimal distortion, this is less of an issue. This is why I found the 28 Elmarit ASPH to be excellent for cropping.