In an earlier discussion on the merits of megapixels, commentator and snail guru Aydin notes:
Megapixel counts matter if you need to crop out large sections of an image & still need to retain enough pixels for a large enough print.
To illustrate Aydin’s point, I’ve taken a full photo of an Australian Monomorium nest and cropped it away to show just the queen ant:
Viola! Instant magnification. I can get away with a tight crop because the original photo spans over 6 million pixels. Blog photos only need 100,000 pixels. Plenty of pixels to spare. Once I get my hands on the Canon 50D, I’ll have 15 million pixels and the resolution to crop down to a single small ant.
So I can crop, but should I? Is cropping a good thing? (more…)