To come right out of the gate, let me say that "I don't like wideangle lenses". Why? Mainly it's the distortion that bothers me, but the lack of background compression pushes everything so far away and the photo ends up consisting of more sky and floor than I'd be happy with. So I made a few experiments using the panorama technique. Essentially it's shooting the scene with a tele lens on a tripod, shifting the camera from shot to shot so that each photo overlaps with what's already been shot by about a third. Then I've been using Photoshop Photomerge to put these shots together. And it works perfectly! Okay, my 7-years old Mac Pro was working for half an hour stitching these together, but I end up with a 130 MP image, that isn't distorted, has beautiful background compression and that benefits from the sharpness of the 120mm F/4 macro lens I was using. I'm now editing a fashion shoot using this technique, but before I want to share with you the result of my test session
Ryan Brenizer who is well know for using this technique with large aperture lenses has said "By stitching together these image, you don't increase the angle of the lens, but the size of the sensor". Which honestly makes it even more of an interesting technique to use. Imagine a 130 MP large format camera with your favorite lens' optical properties. How could anyone not get excited about this
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Have fun everyone trying this out yourself
Pentax 645z w/ Pentax smc 645 FA 120mm F/4 macro @ F/11 1s ISO100 -1EV
(the -1EV is crucial in retaining all the highlight detail in the background!)
Converted and edited in Photoshop CC
---------- Post added 10-31-15 at 01:02 PM ----------
Here is a 100% crop on the trees in the background. Check out the hand print on the tree trunk. So much detail....!