Prenolepis queen

Prenolepis imparis – winter ant (queen)
Urbana, Illinois

Photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f13, 1/250 sec, diffused flash

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Is it ok to crop a photo?

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?

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