Cropping the negative area in some way is pretty much always the norm unless you can tie your work into a format, which I used to do with my own calendar designs: I always drew them around a square image or a 135 format one. In the latter case, it was a very good reason for living Nikon: the F, F2 and F4 (also the F3 I bought later) all showed 100% viewfinder coverage, which I don't believe the Leica R series ever did - by a long way. (I'm not sure about the viewfinder frame accuracy of the old 'blads, but at that size it really didn't matter very much). Framing accuracy on the hop was one very good reason why I never went Leica M, either.
Eventually, as I aged and the calendar images got bigger, I went onto tripods for much of the stuff, but only from about 85mm focal lengths or longer. Tripods were always passion-killers, but long lenses created a different visual dynamic anyway - more 'considered', you might say, and focussing was clearly more iffy hand-held with those longer things, never mind shake! And with ASA 64 transparency film...
Rob C