Well, after a power outage right when I was coming home from work that threw off my schedule for a bit, I'm now sitting on the sofa, relaxing and listening to the first preseason Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game. If you know me, you know hockey is something very important to me - both watching and playing it.

The return of the hockey season is something I've been looking forward to since May 12, 2010. It was big enough that it inspired me as to what to post this evening.

So I looked through my old photos, and I found a set of photos I took three years ago to the day. Oddly enough, it was also a preseason game against the Detroit Redwings.

These shots were taken at the Mellon Arena (which I will always know as the Civic Arena), and I managed to sneak in my Rebel XT with the Canon EF 80-200mm lens attached. Technically, the Civic Arena had a policy that lenses had to be no longer than three inches in length. And unfortunately, the Consol Energy Center has a policy that prohibits all cameras with interchangeable lenses.

As a result, tight photos from a fan's seat might be harder and harder to get. So you just might end up having to crop photos down to get nicer shots. Which is exactly what we'll look at today...

Technical Data: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II at 100mm, 1/200 sec at f/5. ISO 400. Cropped in post production. Mellon Arena, Pittsburgh, PA

Technical Data: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II at 100mm, 1/320 sec at f/5. ISO 400. Cropped in post production. Mellon Arena, Pittsburgh, PA

Technical Data: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II at 100mm, 1/200 sec at f/5. ISO 400. Cropped in post production. Mellon Arena, Pittsburgh, PA

If you mouseover the images, it should load the original, giving you an idea of how much the cropping cleaned up the final product. I probably could have used some effort to remove more distracting elements from the second and third images, but I was just doing a quick crop on these images.

So remember - even if you don't have that super-long telephoto, or you just want to leave your original composition a bit loose so you don't leave out important elements by cropping too closely on your actual shot - especially when shooting quick moving action, you can always go back later and crop things down a bit to get that close shot you're looking for.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. What is your opinion of cropping in camera versus in post production.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to listen to the rest of the game... GO PENS!

- Bill