Not a great composition with the background, but I didn't want to scare it away, so I shot it where it was. This is a Large Tolype Moth. It has an unusual "mohawk". Focus stacked shot.
You got it right. Most of my shots are at 55mm end of the kit lense, and in general cropped to 1:1. As long as the cropped shots are sharp I see no disadvantage, after all we are interested in the image - cropped or not does not matter.