Digital BW, The Print

Carl, very interesting experiment, it certainly shows the potential 
of the stitching technique. I must however point out that you have 
inadvertantly biased the results in favor of digital, by your lens 
choice. I own a  Fuji 240 A, and I consider it my very worst 4x5 
lens. In fact, I consider it to be one (small) step above coke-
bottle grade glass. And Polaroid PN film isn't all that sharp 
either, at least I've never been able to get resolution comparable 
to sheet film out of it. Not to 'nitpick', but the 4x5 should have 
been able to do better!

Steven Karafyllakis

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Carl Schofield 
<scho@m...> wrote:
> 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