Quote Originally Posted by Sirius Glass View Post
What is the point?
<snipped since it's on the same page>
Steve
Fascinating thread everyone, and Steve's points really hit home for me.

Speaking as someone who has done more than his fair share of digital stitching in the past, I heartily concur with the points Steve makes above.

I don't want to have to take 2-300 shots with my 5D MK II and a 200 or 300mm lens in order to come up with something substandard such as this:

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/65156/

or this:

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/62242/

I don't want to have to fight with (what is generally accepted to be) the best stitching software available in order to manually show it where the stitches should be applied (each of the above two took many hours of manual correction, and still neither are perfectly stitched).

I don't want to have to mess around in photoshop to correct weird blotchy sky (I can't even be bothered to learn how to do it actually, as is evident from the above Burj example).

It's why I've got a 5x7 set-up on order, and I can't wait to be able to take a single shot such as this:

http://dxbae.com/old_images/Burj/IMG_7985_1k.JPG (single shot 5D Mk II 17mm TS-E with zero post-processing)

or this:

http://dxbae.com/images/SZM%202%20stitch.jpg (5D Mk II 17mm TS-E two shifted shots stitched)

with a resolution approaching the above gigapans.

I'm not knocking digital stitching - I've had a lot of fun with it over the last year.

But just as there are some wondering what the point of shooting film is when you can do so much with digital these days, I doubt I'm alone in wondering what the point of stitching is when you can do so much with film