Pans a flash in the pan?

[PaulBCT]

A few years ago, much was written about taking single and multiple row (Gigapan) exposures of landscape images to produce huge files with enormous detail. I think i recall an online Gigapan of the Presidential inauguration taken from on high where one could zoom in on individual people in the crowd. Ostensibly this made it possible to make large prints with perfect detail even viewed up close. Jack Dykinga wrote articles about making high MB pans with a tilt/shift lens.
With 45+ megapixel cameras now common, is there still a place for this? If so, where is that place - prints 20 x 30 and up? Are many of you doing it?

 

[DRwyoming]

With 45+ megapixel cameras now common, is there still a place for this?

Sure, I'd say there's still a place for it just like there's still a place for medium format and large format digital or film photography. You can cram 45, 60 or more megapixels into a 35mm frame but it's still a 35mm frame and at some point we can end up with more sensor resolution than our lenses can make good use of. One path is to go to larger format media whether that's larger format digital sensor systems or we emulate that with stitched panos. But the real market for that is typically high end gallery work with very large prints that need to hold up to very close inspection.

Personally I run single row panos from time to time but it's been a few years since I ran a multi-row pano. But there's no doubt you can capture a crazy amount of detail with a well shot 2D pano on even modest resolution cameras. You can also get very wide angles of view with well corrected longer focal length lenses which brings in some IQ advantage compared to many ultra wide angle lenses. IOW, it's not hard to shoot the same or wider scene than you'd capture with say a 14mm lens but with something like a high quality 35mm or 50mm lens using a multi-row pano to bring back the wide field of view but capturing each image with a very well corrected mid focal lens.

 

[Squawk]

This is being used by art galleries and museums and can provide immense details for historians and art students in detail they couldn’t even get even by visiting, so yes, it’s currently immensely important and being done using sensors the like of which we mortals can only dream of. I wish I could remember a recent one that was done and took months to finish but I’ve substituted cream cheese for grey matter. Perhaps a more intelligent life form on the forum can give direction.