With all due respect, but I don't see how that can be attributed to stitching.
Again, image quality is mostly determined by prior Raw conversion and perhaps some tonemapping. Perhaps you are referring to poor choices when being faced with 'impossible' scenarios, such as frontal and backlighting in the same field of view. When the tonemapping is not successful then it has nothing to do with stitching itself but with the skills of the photographer (what's new?).
I'm not sure why you react so condescendingly? Stitching makes impossible images possible, and also unlocks other potential (e.g. distortion correction). Automated capture devices such as the Gigapan just take the drudgery out of the aquisition stage of the process, and it allows for easier stitching, especially when there are also featureless areas such as blue sky involved, or when e.g. moving clouds can throw off an automated control point optimization.
Is stitching a perfect solution? No it isn't, but sometimes there is no other way of achieving one's goals.
I don't think we disagree here.
Stitching can do 180 or 360 degree images previously impossible outside of concentric-circle-slit-cameras (I made one of these in college using binder plastic - very impractical and only useful at creating 360 panoramic).
Using Gigapixel or other massive-stitching techniques doesn't mean the technical image quality of the shot is lower. But most of the stitches I've seen with these machines have been with
very low-quality cameras (mostly point and shoots) in regards to lens quality, lens character, 3d or tactile nature of the rendering, dynamic range, tonal smoothness, noise, or color. And taking such a thousand frames from such a camera vastly increases the resolution - but ONLY the resolution - any given crop of the image still has the bad lens rendering, flat 2d feel, poor highlight/shadow detail, choppy tonal transitions, and poor color.
Using Gigapixel or other massive-stitching techniques doesn't mean the creative quality of the shot is lower. However, that's why I see more often than not. Probably because the creative/talented photographers are focused on composition, light, color, etc etc rather than on stitching thousands of point and shoot images to reconstruct (as someone above said - in a very documentary way) a scene with the highest possible resolution.
I couldn't say it better than JeffKohn - when the
novelty of ultra high resolution wears out (which is - at least for me - a minute or two at most) there had better be a compelling photographic element to the creation. Whether that is subject, emotion, color, light, composition, or anything else.
I would actually be very thrilled to see someone point towards an online gallery of a true artist using this technique/technology to tell stories, evoke emotion, illustrate abstract concepts, or otherwise do anything other than create really really high resolution recreations of a place. Like any other new photographic tool this could be used as a novelty or a device to further push the creative limits of photography. VERY likely someone is in fact out there is using gigapixel technology or other massive-stitching techniques to create compelling/creative/artist images - but I've not seen their work. (I've also not been looking for such work - just commenting based on the massive-stitches I've seen come up on forums or other media sites).
Doug Peterson
__________________
Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One, Leaf, Cambo, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Eizo & More
National: 877.217.9870 | Cell: 740.707.2183
Newsletter:
Read Latest or Sign UpRSS Feed:
SubscribeBuy Capture One at 10% offPersonal Work