Hi,
Here is a comparison of four ways to shoot an image:
http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Shoots/FourWays/
Hi Erik,
Thanks for sharing. The single shot 16mm with software correction has the most natural looking perspective, in my eyes. The stitched results all have somewhat strange looking non-linear perspective distortions, with the 2 image (_DSC4473) TSE24 stitch the most acceptable, but still a bit off.
As a quick try to see what was going on, I reoriented the JPEG version of the TSE 24mm stitch with PTGUI to a strictly 100% keystone corrected frontal look effect (by using only the horizontals and verticals in the image), and there was still a significant (Yaw=0.7598, Pitch=-4.5756, Roll=-0.3147) adjustment necessary (see attached smaller size sample). PTGUI then offers additional control, e.g. adjusting the pitch angle to allow a slight amount of key-stoning (which usually looks more natural to non-architects), or a different vertical compression, or a different projection method. None of these additional tweaks were used in the attached example.
To me, that attached result (before additional tweaks), has a more natural look. The subject is challenging because it is on a hill, and we need a lot of shift to keep things undistorted, which tends to cause a perceptual vertical stretching due to the wide angle of field that is required when using a leveled camera. But the challenging nature of the scene is also a good opportunity to test different approaches.
So as useful as the stitching capability of Lightroom may be, it is (not surprisingly) still no competition for a dedicated Panostitcher, IMHO, due to the lack of control. Of course, the dedicated applications require a different (roundtrip) workflow, which may be acceptable for some, but may not be for others.
Cheers,
Bart