Or use a Phase One P65+ and stitch 7 or 8 60MP captures together...it all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Max image quality with stitched 60MP medium format captures is pretty impressive. It will beat the heck out of a DSLR...
But why would you want to stitch 7 or 8 60mp captures together? Is there a printer big enough to make full use of so much detail? That would be a truly massive project. Not even a billboard requires that much detail. Are you seriously claiming that you find the 60mp of the P65+ sometimes inadequate for your purposes?
Stitching images has often been a pain because of parallax errors when the subject is close, and is something I would rather avoid doing if there's an easier alternative. Stuffing around with pano heads or even using an L bracket to shift the camera body in the opposite direction to the lens shift, is something I've painstakingly tried in the past. I've also wasted a lot of time trying to get perfect stitches of hand-held shots with standard lenses, so I'm now overjoyed I can use a TSE without tripod, for close subjects too, and get perfect stitches as easy as falling off a log.
I think you would probably agree that a stitch of 3 images with a TSE lens on a 1Ds3, with camera vertical, would provide as close as matters to the resolution and detail of a P65+, especially if one fills in a bit of sky or grass with 'context aware' instead of cropping. In fact, in some respects I think the stitched TSE image would be better with regard to edge distortion which gets pretty obvious with extreme wide-angle lenses. I don't believe a lens exists for the P65+ that could provide the angle of view of a stitch of 3 images from a Canon TSE 17mm. Am I right?
Now, if you need to go to the trouble of stitching images from your P65+ in order to get a sufficiently wide angle of view, wouldn't you prefer to uses a lighter set-up and make it easier for yourself, or do you see merit in producing images with unecessary trouble that are unnecessarily detailed for the intended print size?
So, Ray, do you shoot medium format? Are you talking from experience or a reluctance to buy/use medium format because of cost or convenience? If you don't have medium format experience then your opinion may have less relevance and your opinions are more likely an attempt at rationalizing your lack of medium format capability than being truely knowledgeable in your opinions of the limitations of medium format capture. Don't know...just asking...
Yes, Jeff. I was using MF film for some time before I bought my first DSLR, the Canon D60, and used to scan the negatives on the Nikon 8000 ED MF scanner which I bought for the purpose. I still have my Mamiya RB67 stored away with a few prime lenses ranging from 50mm to 300mm, and the much lighter Fuji GSW690 III rangefinder MF camera with fixed 50mm lens. I preferred the GSW690 despite it having a fixed lens, because it was much lighter and easier to handle than the Mamiya tank. As I recall, I avoided using F22.