Digital BW, The Print

Just to follow up on my previous post about stitching, I took some 
comparison shots yesterday at a local waterfall with a 4x5 and a Canon 
10D.  Here is a side by side comparison of a stitched composite image 
(18 frames (landscape orientation) in a 3 column by 6 row matrix) made 
with the Canon 10D and 135mm f/2 L lens and a scanned (Epson 3200 set 
to produce a 16x2016 bit grayscale at 360 ppi) image from a Polaroid 
type 55 4x5 negative, shot with a Tachihara 4x5 field camera and 
Fujinon A 240mm f/9 lens.  Exposure for the 4x5 was 2 seconds at f/32 
(EI 25) and for the 10D images 1/6 sec f/16 (EI 100).  The comparison 
images are side by side screen grabs in Photoshop at 8, 25, 50 and 100% 
of image size.  The 4x5 image is 83.6 MB and the stitched 10D image is 
80.1 MB and both are 16 bit gray. The 25% image is approximately the 
appearance when the images are printed at 16x20 inches.  The stitched 
10D image compares quite favorably to the 4x5, although the stitching 
is very tedious and time consuming.  You would need a 40 MP digital 
camera to get single shot images comparable to the size and quality of 
either the 4x5 or stitched 10D images.

http://homepage.mac.com/scho/forweb/index.htm