Would you buy a digital XPAN?

[atlcruiser]

I don't get the allure of Xpan in general.
The negative you get is tiny (compared to a 6x17 system) and they are not easy to scan or to print.

Agree with the sentiments, I can stitch panoramic images using just an ordinary DSLR with a tripod.

Well....in theory I can take enough pictures of one object and make the same resolution of 810 film. One can stich all day and make amazing photo-like art but taking a photo within the framework of a set format is a different beast.

Yep..it is a tiny negative when compared to 6x17 yet it is much cheaper, smaller, faster and hand holdable. The comparison to a 6x17 does not really hold water. I could just as easily say how much crap the 6x17 is when compared to a 8 x 20 ULF


And no, I would not be too interested in a digital x pan

 

[pluton]

I'm glad I'm not the only one old enough to remember 3-panel Cinerama! A little history: when Mike Todd, who was a part-owner of Cinerama, saw the distortion that can occur at the join lines of the three panels, he sold his interest in the company to fund the development of a process that required only one camera and one projector. The result was Todd-AO, developed in conjunction with the American Optical Company. Eventually the 70mm Todd-AO process spun off a few others: MGM Camera 65; Panavision; and Super Cinerama.

The distortion at the join lines becomes worse as the angle of view of each segment increases. One way to minimize it is to hold down the width of each section. So instead of using a 3:2 proportion horizontally, it would be better to make each panel undersquare, rather than oversquare. Cinerama used undersquare panels.

To use this idea with a digital XPan, you would have to somehow expose each panel so that stray light from each lens would not spill onto adjacent panels. Cinerama used three separate cameras; a digital XPan might need three separate dark chambers. But you would still have the discontinuity that causes horizontal lines to "break" at the join lines. I remember watching a bus move across the Cinerama screen. The roof line of the bus had a break in it that appeared to move along the length of the bus as it moved across the screen. That was weird!

I think a digital XPan would need to use a single sensor and one lens, just as Todd-AO used one film and one lens.

OK, so we line up five APS-C cameras with identical lenses, vertical, to get the undersquare orientation. Remember, the merge software gives you a choice of correcting the image geometry and simulating a curved or flat film plane. It buildable TODAY, and would not require a limited-market curved sensor, or wide aspect sensor, neither of which presently exist (as far as I know). As for cropping a 1.5:1 DSLR frame, yeah, I've done that with my 12MP full frame; but you throw away at least half, and as much as 3/4 of your pixels(depending on the target aspect ratio) when you crop. A 36MP DSLR would be nice for the cropping method.

 

[Rob-F]

OK, so we line up five APS-C cameras with identical lenses, vertical, to get the undersquare orientation. Remember, the merge software gives you a choice of correcting the image geometry and simulating a curved or flat film plane. It buildable TODAY, and would not require a limited-market curved sensor, or wide aspect sensor, neither of which presently exist (as far as I know). As for cropping a 1.5:1 DSLR frame, yeah, I've done that with my 12MP full frame; but you throw away at least half, and as much as 3/4 of your pixels(depending on the target aspect ratio) when you crop. A 36MP DSLR would be nice for the cropping method.

Interesting idea! Five X100s, maybe? Or even five little used point and shoots, to try out the idea. Even if they were only about 6MP each, that would be 30MP all together, minus a little for overlap. But how to solve this part: how would we trip all the shutters at the same time? These little cameras don't seem to have cable release sockets. And electronic tripping would be much better.

 

[raid]

I use my iPhone camera as my "digital Xpan".

 

[pluton]

I still don't have the dough to build it.
Triggering all at once means an electronic release, just like most cameras have now via a mini /sub-mini TRS jack.
For now, I have a wide selection of wide angle lenses on a D800E cam.
The most difficult thing with the DSLR is the distortion of the retrofocus wide angles, so software is brought in to massage the output.

 

[sebastel]

I wonder if the time is near when the XPAN could enter the digital age. ...
Would you be interested?

no.

but a digital widelux i'd be interested in.
no need for really large sensor ... actually, the modules used in modern mobile phones could suffice already. the point here is the (mechanically) rotating lens/sensor unit, and the in-camera postprocessing of course.

 

[_sgb_]

Just thinking out loud here but would anamorphic lenses achieve the end product that one expect from the hypothetical digital XPAN?