The cost for this technology is not trivial. Better Light is the leading manufacturer
of digital scanning backs. Their hardware with Viewfinder software is priced
from US$6,495 to $22,995. These prices compare favorably with professional
medium format instant capture systems. View cameras are “an acquired taste”
for many photographers. I have always enjoyed using them and this 100-year-old
camera design is enjoying a resurgence. Newer cameras are made of carbon fiber,
polyethylene plastic and, of course, traditional wood. If you buy a view camera
to use with a scanning back, be certain that the bellows are made of a composite
rubber material instead of leather. Leather bellows leak IR light which is not
acceptable to scanning backs. View camera lenses are, by and large, sharp, have
excellent contrast and have large image circles. The ability to move the image
area around in the image plane makes the view camera lens an architectural tool.
The image circle is often large enough to shift the camera back far right for one
scan and far left for another scan, then merge them in Photoshop for a perfect flat
stitch. The stitch overlap is only about 10% and the resulting image is perfectly
rectilinear (Fig. 7).
Figure 5. This continuous panorama has no motion artifact because the image was
captured at a line time of 1/240th of a second. This image would be impossible to create
using the segmented stitch technique. Photo by Tom Watson.
Figure 6. A panorama of the Academical Village at the University of Virginia in 2006.
Photo by Tom Watson.
Figure 7. A rectilinear panorama. Photo by Tom Watson.