Nearly 180 degree pano

[Akira]

PTGui is the best stitching software out there as far as I know.

Yes, to my understanding, it is the best pano software.  Marco (Lanciani), Alan and (maybe) Frank use it to do their impressive stitches.

[pluton]

I assume you just do 2 rows and the software pics up it's 2 rows??

My Ps CS6 once did a handheld pano that was five rows tall and totaled 79 shots(as I recall).  It assembled them fine, but it wasn't an interesting shot

[ColinM]

I have never done two rows of images - so forgive the blondness
I assume you just do 2 rows and the software pics up it's 2 rows??

So I think you've seen enough replies to know there's (almost) no limit.
I think there are a few well publicised Giga-pixel images on the web made from large numbers of stitched source images.
For me I have sometimes used it when I was getting wistful about not having a 50Mp camers, as a way of letting my D300 maybe capture a little more.

If you remember the old NG site, Fred/Alan used this approach quite a lot for several of his forest & landscape images.

For those of you who are more experienced in doing this, I would be interested to know the pros & cons of the different approaches.

Multi-image shots should give us the equivalent of more pixels

• Is this only of use up to (say) 10-15 source files?
• Are we only going to see the benefit when doing really large prints
  or online images that people can zoom in/out of ?
• Are there any drawbacks?

[Akira]

Colin, the original tiff of my initial pano has about 100MP.  Sometimes I stitch only a couple of frames vertically or horizontally in order to make a wideangle image using my 35/1.8 ED on D7000, which is not necessarily for large prints but is very handy.  The current Photomerge does the hand-held panos very well in many cases, alsthough it doesn't offer such a full control as on PTGui.

I have tried 2 x 12 stitch using Photomerge, but it should be capable of handling more images.

The drawback of pano using Photomerge would be:
1. The stitch error is difficult to correct.
2. You cannot really do panos for moving object or landscapes in windy conditions.

[Erik Lund]

I have never done two rows of images - so forgive the blondness
I assume you just do 2 rows and the software pics up it's 2 rows??

So I think you've seen enough replies to know there's (almost) no limit.
I think there are a few well publicised Giga-pixel images on the web made from large numbers of stitched source images.
For me I have sometimes used it when I was getting wistful about not having a 50Mp camers, as a way of letting my D300 maybe capture a little more.

If you remember the old NG site, Fred/Alan used this approach quite a lot for several of his forest & landscape images.

For those of you who are more experienced in doing this, I would be interested to know the pros & cons of the different approaches.

Multi-image shots should give us the equivalent of more pixels

• Is this only of use up to (say) 10-15 source files?
• Are we only going to see the benefit when doing really large prints
  or online images that people can zoom in/out of ?
• Are there any drawbacks?

It's important to keep the enterence pupil of the lens in the same spot to avoid parllax problems. A gimball head is really usefull for this.
I prefer to shoot in portrait orientation,,, Just feels right somehow...

I see no drawbacks except for shooting non static scenes, cars or people mooving...