Do you crop before or after

Almost from the start I have done my cropping in-camera - and still do.

With the advance of digital photography and graphics software I see many discussions in the various fora about post-event cropping and composition.

Are we loosing our abilities or enhancing them. I realise that cropping is necessary but not as much as what's happening. Any thoughts?

I have always cropped my images to suit the subject matter, be it in the darkroom, on the computer screen or even taking a pair of scissors to a trade processed print.

Just because our film format, CCD or whatever is a particular shape doesn't mean that it will suit my subject or my composition. So I look upon cropping as a basic compositional tool.

As one who has for many years used slide film and done slide shows there is a certain satisfaction in producing a well composed image with no cropping. I will still use slide film (at least until you can get a digital projector that can come close to the quality of a slide projector for money I am prepared to pay) and so that urge to compose well in the camera will remain.

However when shooting digitally in a moving environment I am now tending to allow a bit more space around the subject - you can crop in but you cannot crop out. Better a bit to much sky than risking cutting a wing off!

I mostly print to A4 with a border which gives plenty of scope for cropping from a 6MP image

You can also crop slides if you want to. The pentax MZ5 and MZ3 have Panoramic options, where the film gate is cropped to a panoramic format. Ideal for slides.

Alternatively, cropping can be achieved with a variety of thin metal pre-made masks, or even using Kitchen Foil.