Hi,
I'm new here and I hope this is the best forum section to put this question. I do lurk a lot here and many of you folks obviously know your stuff.
My situation is as the title mentioned, I need to shoot up close, fields of flowers, stream banks, etc., where say the field of flowers, one flower petal in the foreground may take up most of one full frame within the multi-gigapixel image. I need to find a way to have maximum sharpness throughout the image. The project will be for online viewing at 100% for the specific reason of viewing extreme detail, not for print.
Just so you know what I'm working with. I'm currently using a D800 + Nodal Ninja Ultimate M2 with R8 rotator. I have the Nikon 200mm f/2g VRII and a Nikon 50mm 1.8.
I'm trying to figure out what products would come close to working for deep DOF and not have too many distortion or parallax errors when stitching the multi-gigapixel image. I have looked at various tilt shift lenses such as Schneider and Hartblei, and products such as the Cambo X2 Pro, Horseman VCC pro, Cambo Ultima 35, etc., but am not sure if those types of products will work with what I'm trying to do. For the latter listed DSLR systems, it is hard to find much information much less in regards to what I'm trying to do. I also might mention I don't have a large budget and the project is temporary. I don't have any knowledge of how to utilize view camera types of systems, but of course am willing to learn if that is what I need to pull this off.
Another idea I had was blue screening sections of the flowers that are sharp, to later cut and layer together, but that would be a pain.
With the wind always prevalent in our area, I can't see focus stacking working either.
Any thoughts or ideas for me of what might work best? At the moment I'm thinking a plain old tilt shift lens may be my best bet. I didn't want to purchase until I got some advice, hopefully.
Many thanks for any help!