I am interested to know, why some professional landscape photographers user cameras like the Linhoff 617 pano camera as opposed to going digital?
I realize it is a medium format camera, but is it really worth it?
I wonder if my D300 with uprezzing software would be an alternative...
Can anybody pls explain to me what the difference is?
Thanks
If you're talking about a single D300 image uprezzed vs a 6x17 MF image scanned, there's no contest. You're bringing a knife to a tank fight! I've seen images from these 6x17 cameras blown up to 5 or 6 feet across and you can count the blades of grass or pebbles on the ground.
However, if you take enough shots with the D300 and stitch them together, now you're probably going to get close. Not sure exactly how many you would need - you may have to shoot vertical and horizontal, but I'm sure if you shot enough you would compete with it. Only problem is, if there's anything moving in the photo, it might be a challenge.
There's a reason people pay the huge price for pano cameras. I had thought about it myself - till I saw the price. A camera and 3 or 4 lenses is $20K easy.
I started with digital and have moved to (big) film almost exclusively for landscape type shots. I found that with digital I just ran out of resolution in a scene with lots of fine detail. This was exemplified very well in an experience I had a few months ago. I was in a coffee shop that had some photos hanging on the walls that were for sale. One was a very nice print (about 11X14) that included a lot of grass. As I started to study the print I realized that something looked "off" the grass didn't really look like grass, it was little squares and rectangles. It was shot with a digital camera, and the fine detail resolution wasn't there.
Yes this can be avoided with stitching and uprezing, but I have found that I simply like the film process better for this sort of thing. I shoot mostly B&W which brings along with it the advantage of a vastly expanded dynamic range (unless you shoot HDR and add bracketing along with stitching)
For me I love shooting with these big "old" cameras, I shoot mostly 4X5 but have recently started dabbling in 8X10. Sure there are other ways to do it, but I find that for me this is the best bang for the buck. I have less invested in my 4X5 and 8X10 cameras and lenses than I do in my Nikon gear. 6x17 cameras are expensive, 4X5, 5X7 and 8X10 don't have to be.
Thom Hogan uses Autopano pro.
If you go to the website it would have you believe even a computer retard such as myself could use it and on top of that if you bracket each shot it will do HDR on the way through.
Let us know how you get on
Tim
Thanks for your replies.
And also thanks for answering my question in regards to the Linhoff.
The thing is, I am happy to shoot a pano on my panohead, and thus get a very real looking pano. However I wonder if I could print such huge sized prints. Meaning I guess I would have to shoot a lot more panels for the pano in order to get to such a comparable MP size file.
I would imagine, a 50mm lens would probably get there (by taking heaps of panels, multirow and stitching them all together.
What are your thoughts?
btw. my software of choice is PTGUI, I prefer it over Autopano.
I've seen several photogs who use a D2x or even one who uses a D1x to shoot multi-row multi-column panos. It's very doable and once you get enough shots in there your eventually going to exceed what you can even get out of 8x10 film.
Most of those guys I've talked to shot with moderate to short telephoto lenses 85-150mm ish and printed not in inches but in feet. The results were breathtakingly detailed and immersive. 20+ photos in a stitch isn't out of the norm.
I'll see if I can find any of their business cards around here tomorrow, they tend to frequent our art fairs.
+1 for Ptgui, good stuff.
As for those 6x17 in negatives... pay to have a few drum scanned and you'll either wish you have a grant, a trust fund, or an investor. The vertical resolution in those negatives will be no more than what you can get out of a 6x7 negative, and as far as I'm concerned we're at a point where digital can roughly equal that for a much lower per shot cost (ie big drum scans are spendy and look better than a 12-21mp dig capture, I don't know anyone these days who drums everything though, and our top of the line digital bodies can match what your getting out of cheaper scan.)
I think form a realistic perspective some of Michael's older essays on 35mm digital vs medium format on Luminous Landscape are still some of the best out there.
All of you are forgetting one important difference. A 6x17 cammera takes a single pano shot. If your stiching digital captures evrything has got to stand still at least reletivly. I've tried shooting fall foliage this way and went nuts with the stiching so much so that i got a 6x12 back for my 4x5. Also if you want to do 6x17 you really don't have to get a linhof. A dedicated cam like a gaoresi and lens will cost a total of under $1000 while cropping 4x5 will get you there for much less.
I have the exact same setup, sigma lens and nodal ninja3 (which I love).
The question is, at 10mm, do you not have too few panels, and thus too little resolution overall to compare it with a pano camera? Or in other words, could you print it on an comparably large scale as a MF Linhoff pano camera?
stompyq wrote:
All of you are forgetting one important difference. A 6x17 cammera takes a single pano shot. If your stiching digital captures evrything has got to stand still at least reletivly. I've tried shooting fall foliage this way and went nuts with the stiching so much so that i got a 6x12 back for my 4x5. Also if you want to do 6x17 you really don't have to get a linhof. A dedicated cam like a gaoresi and lens will cost a total of under $1000 while cropping 4x5 will get you there for much less.
Good point, so why would people spend 10times that amount to get a linhoff? I mean they are so simple and rigid (no electronics etc.), that I can not imagine it would be worth spending 10k on a Linhoff 617...
there are pano setups where you have multiple cameras and lenses. the one i saw had 5 cameras arranged to take a full 360 pano in one synchronized exposure from each camera. for a Linhof-type cost, you could buy a 15 camera grid with matching lenses. it's only money and assistants to carry everything.
Herb....
stompyq wrote:
All of you are forgetting one important difference. A 6x17 cammera takes a single pano shot. If your stiching digital captures evrything has got to stand still at least reletivly. I've tried shooting fall foliage this way and went nuts with the stiching so much so that i got a 6x12 back for my 4x5. Also if you want to do 6x17 you really don't have to get a linhof. A dedicated cam like a gaoresi and lens will cost a total of under $1000 while cropping 4x5 will get you there for much less.
cencored wrote:
Good point, so why would people spend 10times that amount to get a linhoff? I mean they are so simple and rigid (no electronics etc.), that I can not imagine it would be worth spending 10k on a Linhoff 617...
Build quality, ease of use, easier focussing and framing with matching finders, very very precise, much much better film flatnes.... the list can go on. The best thing would be to handle one
in my opinion, the Nodal Ninja and similar heads are completely unnecessary unless you are shooting multirow panos. i don't bother with a nodal plate except for indoor panos with nearby objects. i've been shooting stitched panoramas since my film days.
I agree with Herb, with todays stitching software (even CS3) you can get really nice panos, however you end up having to cut off quite a fair bit at top and bottom and at the sides, if you shoot it handheld. With a pano head you hardly have to crop the finished result.
A more important advantage is in landscapes with foreground interest. This is where the parallax error is most affecting the image.
And the most important factor of course, as Herb said, is when shooting multirow, there pretty much is no replacement for a pano head (a multirow one of course)
