[Leica] Advise or impressions on panoramic cameras / photography?

[richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man)]

They are Infidels~! :-)

No seriously, here's the deal: if you want "convenience" (as using
Photoshop or other stitching software is convenient), digital is the way to
go. Check out the archive for some posting from Howard Cummer - he has made
hand swift pano stitching into an art. Basically, if you sweep steadily and
time it right, you don't even need a tripod and get quite excellent
results.

For landscape and even some moving objects, that's probably the way to go.

For some jaw dropping A+++++ fine art hand sweep and focus stacked stuff,
search for the posting from Paul Roark. With stitched M9 or other digital
panos, he get 30-100 megapixel images.

However, a pano camera is a lot of fun. I have an XPan II and a TX-2 (same
thing) and I use them as much as my Leica. I started with doing mostly
landscapes with them, but honestly, to do landscapes well, you need huge
pixels nowadays, and that means digital back. So now I use the XPan also
for street. Check out some of the portfolios:
http://www.richardmanphoto.com/Portfolio/CalloftheOcean.pdf   <-- entirely
XPan
http://www.richardmanphoto.com/Portfolio/Yosemite2011.pdf  <-- mostly XPan
http://richardmanphoto.com//Portfolio/Chinatown_web.pdf  <-- XPan and M9
http://www.richardmanphoto.com/Portfolio/Vot99.pdf  <-- XPan and M9

With XPan, I have printed up to 50+ inches long and the image looks good.

The downside is... unless you print in darkroom (then you need a 6x7
capable enlarger), you will need to scan. You can get acceptable results
using one of the new flatbed like the V500 or V750, but the best is the
medium format film scanner. Unfortunately since Nikon terminated the
product line, their LS-9000 is now typically goes for $3000 and up.

As for XPan vs. Widelux. With XPan, you will get distortion on the edges
just like a wide angle lens. With Widelux and other swing lens pano camera,
all objects appear "normal," regardless their position on the image.
However, lines are curves and this may bother you, or not.

Keep in mind that some people LOVE pano and you will get praises just for
using a pano camera but other do not get pano and they think that part of
the picture is missing.

Hope this helps. Any more question, feel free to ask it here or email me
off list.

-- 
// richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>