Is Medium Format Stitching Popular?

[Fotoman Professional]

The trend these days, most likely driven by cost, I see a good number of people stitching with DSLR’s and coming up with great results. However I haven't seen many stitching with medium format. Is this popular? I found a company out of NYC that that has a rig for the back of a 4x5 that you can attach your medium format digital back and it will take 4 images. You then stitch them together and you have your digital 4x5. Then, as we all know, there is Gigapan and all others in that group. The question is, are there people shooting Gigapixel images with a medium format back?

It would be interesting to understand who is doing this and where to see their work.

[Daniel Stone]

I know of a few people who shoot and stitch digital MF files. Takes more computer "muscle" than working with DSLR files.

results either way CAN be spectacular though!

-Dan

[Fotoman Professional]

Exactly!!! This is the main reason for asking. If there are people out there shooting medium format and stitching I'd love to see the results. I can see lots out there from DSLRs and they are great. Where is the medium format work?

[adelorenzo]

Zach Arias has started doing stitched portraits recently with his Phase One. He hasn't posted images yet but there is some discussion here:

http://zarias.tumblr.com/post/585780...-into-stitched

[Amedeus]

I stitch a lot with a MF back (Leaf Aptus 10) and it does require some computer muscle power and good shooting practices. Nothing too complicated though.

I shoot landscape panorama's this way but I've also shot people same way. The latter is more difficult and requires manual stitching at times as people inevitably move ;-)

Printing images over 8 feet wide and displaying them can be challenging ... and comes at an expense ...

I do have work on my website below ... does take some navigating to get there ... the large body images are in the 18+ folder. I also have a number of vertical body stitches I didn't publish yet ... these images are door sized ;-)

[Fotoman Professional]

Amedeus, great work! Simply good photogrpahy.

Stitched protrait work seems took risky and labor intensive. However the Arias work and Amedeus work looks beautiful. What sort of post processing time is spent on a stitched portrait?

[Amedeus]

Thanks.

Time spent varies greatly. Retouching a stitched bodyscape can take anywhere from 2-8 hours depending on what I go for in terms of look and how "clean" I want the image. Sometimes I develop the look on a small version, make this an action and then run this overnight on the large original. A lot of memory in the computer is key as well as fast internal scratch hard drives.

I remember once running a NIK filter on a three landscape (30" x 300") and that took a full week. Never again. In this case I also had to do the stitch manually on 23 images as the computer couldn't stitch the small branches in the background ...

Amedeus, great work! Simply good photogrpahy.

Stitched protrait work seems took risky and labor intensive. However the Arias work and Amedeus work looks beautiful. What sort of post processing time is spent on a stitched portrait?

[tangyimail]

Guys around me are doing more and more stitching using mostly Hassy backs. Results are great. But I can't persuade me to make the investment in a whole new system.

Amedeus, great photos!

[Amedeus]

Thanks.

I started out with a CF 39MP-II back for the earlier work until I switched to the Leaf Aptus. Either MF back works, all a matter of which camera system you have and the lenses of course. I also use the Phase One Flexadaptor on a Sinar P 4x5 camera. That works great for three stitched frames and gives access to tilt/shift etc.

Wish I had a solution I could integrate on my website to show panoramics full size ... maybe one day.

The real fun though starts when you print one out ;-)

Guys around me are doing more and more stitching using mostly Hassy backs. Results are great. But I can't persuade me to make the investment in a whole new system.

Amedeus, great photos!

[Brian Ellis]

Thanks.

Time spent varies greatly. Retouching a stitched bodyscape can take anywhere from 2-8 hours depending on what I go for in terms of look and how "clean" I want the image. Sometimes I develop the look on a small version, make this an action and then run this overnight on the large original. A lot of memory in the computer is key as well as fast internal scratch hard drives.

I remember once running a NIK filter on a three landscape (30" x 300") and that took a full week. Never again. In this case I also had to do the stitch manually on 23 images as the computer couldn't stitch the small branches in the background ...

Two to eight hours? But . . . but . . . I thought that "digital" only required the push of a button to make a masterpiece.