There are times when it seems crazy to shoot HD video for web content. After all, what is the point of shooting HD video at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels when you're going to end up squeezing it into a frame of 320 x 180, or less? Well, there is one advantage: cropping. Purists might want to turn away at this point, but as 320 pixels is exactly one sixth of the width of a full HD frame, in theory it is possible to zoom into the frame by a factor of six during the edit without affecting the final resolution.I can think of several reasons when this might be a suitable option for web video.
- I often reframe interviews in the edit suite without needing to do it at the interview stage. I shoot wide and then take a tighter crop if I need to emphasise a point that is being made.
- When shooting wildlife, you always want to be nearer. Cropping to the maximum extent could turn that 500mm lens into a 3000mm lens, if you're content to shoot just for low-resolution web outputs.
- When shooting through a telescope (as I often need to do) you can lock the pan and tilt head off completely while maintaining a loose framing, so that your subject has room to move around the frame. You can then follow the action in the edit suite rather than in the hide. Using this technique you can create smoother pans and tilts than you would by physically moving an extreme magnification lens.
- You could easily reuse some content within the same production by using different crops: crowd scenes, for example.
The framings in my photograph of a corncrake (above) show the potential for cropping into your subject at different resolutions without losing definition.
- 1920 x 1080 represents full HD
- 1280 x 720 is also a widely available HD format, available on the Nikon D90, for example
- 1024 x 576 is the standard definition for shooting for TV
- Web size in this illustration is 320 x 180
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