I tend to have a lot of padding around my shots when viewed back on modern (I suppose not so modern now) LCD TVs - In fact when I watch on my Sharp 32" TV almost all the shot is in view as the bezel is so narrow. Should I frame tighter and disregard people watching on ancient tellys with really wide bezels? There can't be many these days watching on CRTs surely.

Pete

Most TVs now are going to show pretty much the entire image, and for online viewing, the viewer sees every pixel, edge to edge.

Thanks

Peter,

I am an old sports photographer. Shooting tight is pounded into us big time. That experience is reflected in my video "style". I have almost never regretted shooting tight, at least not as far as screen cropping goes. In my mind I am still conditioned to believe good tight shots are one of the marks of a pro compared to an amateur. Shoot tight, no one will complain about being able to see into your subjects eyes :-)

Steve

For me old habits die hard and when I'm framing people such as in the ceremony or speeches I tend to leave a little 'padding' to allow for the safe area but of course LCD television sets have a tiny bezel (if at all) and of course online viewing is full frame so I need to forget the old ways lol!

Well, I was recently looking at footage I shot 'tighter' last year in the knowledge that with the change in screen technologies and viewing platforms, the outer safety zone is no longer required in the future. And I've now gone back.

Weird, huh?

Andrew

I trust my eye what looks good. Leaving a margin avoids that cramped feeling when a subject gets too close to the edge.

I really use my own judgement re composition; evaluate shot by shot. However I don't give any consideration to safety margins, except when using text in video, I'll reference it and even then I am not sticking totally to it. Few should be running CRT TV's and if they do, they just have to live with the crop.

I shoot with what looks good on a full crop, but I keep text and graphic elements inside 10%. Text safe was traditionally 20%, but that looks goofy to me now. When I was working in broadcast, we had to keep text inside 4:3 text safe, and anything you put on the screen looked like a postage stamp in the center of a page in 16:9.