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Anyone Stitching Panos with a MF Digital Back?

mmbma

Active member
Yes. Actual file of a 180mp sensor will be much larger in 16 bit. A drum scan of my 6x17 film usually yield a 1.3gig file alone at 4000 dpi i think (could be wrong about the resolution)

a few manupilations in photoshop on a file that size will easily get out of hand
 

tcdeveau

Well-known member
I stitch with my H4D-40 but with mixed results, mainly due to operator error haha. I find if you plan to do panos, esp early in the morning, make sure you have enough coffee in you cause there's a decent amount involved.

Gear: Hassy H4D-40, 35-90mm, RRS TVC-33, BH-55, RRS pano clamp, RRS nodal slide
Software: phocus, lightroom, photoshop, etc

In my experience....I'm just repeating what a lot of others have said, but if you decide to stitch with this method nodal slide method, for optimum results, make sure you: 1) level everything; 2) shoot manual exposure; 3) when in manual, expose for the highlights BEFORE starting the pano (MFD is very forgiving but you can have unrecoverable highlights as I have found out); 4) avoid using wide angles - vignetting and distortion can do weird things; 5) avoid shooting moving subjects (waves, fog, etc...sometimes long exposure water is fine); 6) make sure you get around 1/3 overlap. I need to print out these steps and stick them on my pano clamp cause I always forget something in the field haha. You are also going to want to know your nodal slide points for each focal length you carry before you get out in the field if you plan to have a busy foreground.

Leveling and planning your composition seem to be the most important steps for me with this method. If you end up having to crop from your pano you lose lots of resolution and kinda defeat the purpose of doing a pano.

I find it's not always necessary to find the nodal point unless you have a distinct foreground. Most of the panos I do are things in the distance and I find parallax errors aren't a huge deal as you increase subject to camera distance.

I also ALWAYS take a wide angle shot BEFORE starting the pano in case I screw up the pano. That way I have at least get the shot I want and have one file I can do a 6x17 crop on.

I attached two panos I did last week in San Fran with the above method. Both are 2-stitch panos at 39MP and 65MP respectively, demonstrating the important of planning your shot and leveling if you don't wanna lose resolution.
 
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