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Thread: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

  1. #11
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Parker View Post

    My questions is if you take ten images with a 10 megapixel camera and stitch them together, how are you increasing the resolution? I have seen claims of say 100 mp? But even if you stitch 10 10mp images together, you have a larger 10 mp image, are you saying if you stitch these together your multiplying 10 x 10 to come up with 100mp? I don't understand, total over all resolution doesn't increase because you lay them end on end?
    The same way that when you shoot a 4x5 compared on shooting a 35mm, you get an image that you often call "higher resolution" when it has just higher information content.

  2. #12

    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    really interesing batch of threads on stitching, thanks to all. i expect that in the not-too-distant-future we may see a dslr with say a zoom lens that will work it all out for us... while we sit back and munch doughnuts!!

  3. #13

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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Dave, let's say you want a 40x50" print of a given scene, and you are going to use a DSLR camera to take the photo. You could make one exposure with a wide angle lens, and make the print from the resulting 16 Megapixel image (which would look terrible). Or you could put on a "normal" lens and shoot the bottom left quarter of the scene as one exposure, the top left quarter as another exposure, and so on until you had four exposures that when stitched together, would be a 64 megapixel file of the exact same scene as the original picture that was one exposure. If you put on a 200mm telephoto instead, and did the same thing, you would end up with a grid of 24-or-so images, which when all stitched together would add up to the same scene you started with, but at far higher resolution. Each of the exposures would only be a small part of your final 40x50" print.

    For a cool example of this being done to insane image quality, check out this:

    http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

    That image could be printed at the full resolution of the Lightjet (305 dpi) at a size of 87x133", and every square inch of the print would be as sharp and detailed as the Lightjet has the ability to print. Unfortunately there is no Lightjet that prints that big (72" is the height limit), but you get the idea anyway.

    My new work is all made this way too-- huge digital files assembled from thousands of smaller ones (sometimes with the help of moscaic software, but most of them I do by hand). If you look at my website you can see kind of what the results look like, although there is no substitute for seeing the real 6x8-foot prints.

  4. #14

    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    ... but you gotta have a giga-brain to visualise a 24 grid image, i think that i would need some kind of harware support for anything over 9, gordon's comment on the spherical view too is interesting and means that there are really only certain types of images that are going to work...

    until the auto stiching dslr is released...

  5. #15

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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Ade, I'm hoping for an automatic motorized stitching tripod head (which already exists), in conjunction with a video-robot moon-rover type of thing, so I can sit in front of my computer in my underwear guiding my camera while it drives around taking all my pictures for me. When it gets home from a long trip, I'll ask it "Did I have a good time?"

  6. #16

    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Quote Originally Posted by QT Luong View Post
    The same way that when you shoot a 150 lens on a 4x5 compared on shooting a 150 lens on 35mm, you get an image that you often call "higher resolution" when it has simpler higher information content.
    When you compare to Chris Perez and others tests of 4x5, it seems about a real 60 lp/mm resolution is about it. Going by a few testers results with some 35mm film (i.e. Erwin Puts review of Fuji Astia 100F and Kodak E100G a few years ago), a real 80 lp/mm to 90 lp/mm seems to be a limit of colour films. So using a 150mm lens on a 35mm camera to cover the same FoV that a 150mm on a 4x5 would cover could result in greater resolution.

    Using results from DPReview and other sites, the best of top level D-SLRs in terms of resolution is the Nikon D2X, with near 55 lp/mm to 60 lp/mm, depending upon which site and test you review. Remember that resolution is not file size. So if you simply had the same 150mm lens to stitch together a field of view to match a 150mm lens on a 4x5, then outright resolution would probably be quite close. However, some people will point out a different appearance to the digital capture, which could be perceived as a sharper image, making people think it is higher resolution . . . or comments such as cleaner image.

    Notes: All these comparisons assume tripod mounted cameras with ideal conditions, and very good lenses; shoot handheld with anything and you can never approach these limits. Also, remember that test sites indicate highest contrast target resolutions. It is easier to compare high contrast results than medium contrast results, only because it can indicate outright resolution limits. While film can do quite well with high contrast real world imaging, some films do not do as well with medium contrast images, while some digital imaging sensors do better with low to medium contrast targets. Film also does well with details not in a perfect vertical or horizontal orientation, though to get that extra information can require scanning at much higher resolution than might be required for printing. Digital image sensors are oriented horizontally and vertically with their cell site orientation, and do worse with diagonally oriented information. Ease of use and convenience can be much better reasons to use digital cameras than outright performance; that can make one more consistant with their results, so it is important to consider those aspects.

    To take advantage of stitching with a D-SLR, you would use a longer focal length lens, and even more frames to stitch together the final image. So imagine using a 300mm instead of a 150mm, requiring many more frames to be captured and stitched together. The overall FoV of the result might still match a 150mm on a 4x5, but the image would contain more information.

    Ciao!

    Gordon Moat
    A G Studio
    Last edited by Gordon Moat; 12-Feb-2007 at 13:27. Reason: spelling and grammar

  7. #17

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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Chris,

    When you say you put these together by hand, just what do you mean? Do you take a large workspace in PS and then cut and paste from individual digital images to the much larger final working image size? When you use stitching, which do you use?

    An finally one other question...

    Have you seen any benefit from printing 16x20 or 20x24 prints at much higher resolutions, say 600dpi without any uprez, using the stitched image?

    Bill

  8. #18

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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Hi Bill, yep that's the workflow of my current project. I cut and paste onto a large canvas from hundreds or even thousands of smaller images. I do my own kind of stitching that is my invention (that doesn't involve using any stitching software).

    And to answer your second question, the way to get the best possible digital print quality is to feed the printer a file that is already ressed to the printer's native resolution. For the Epsons that is 360 dpi; for the Lightjet it is 305 dpi; I'm not sure what it is for the Chromira and other printers. If you send the printer a higher-resolution file, the printer has to down-res to its native resolution using its internal software, which is not as sophisiticated as the bicubic interpolation that Photoshop has, plus you can't see what it is doing so you don't get a chance to tweak it afterwards (such as doing some additional sharpening if necessary). So I always res my file to the printer's resolution, then do any sharpening and other tweaking that might be needed (noise reduction, etc.), and print from there. That's a pretty standard practice with digital printing so I don't think you'll find much disagreement on that point.

  9. #19

    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    chris, i have a contact in nasa, and he assures me that the ©moon-rover-digitar-stitcher is up there on mars, when it gets back i'm sure he'll let you take it out for a spin!

    ade

  10. #20

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    Re: Stitching Question - Digital SLR vs 4x5

    Ade, I have heard that the Mars rover only captures a few hundred megabytes, which won't be sufficient for my next series of prints, which will be 40x50 miles in size, printed in limited editions of zero.

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