Ultra Digital XPan - Part 1

If you have been following this blog, you will know I like to ‘play about' with adapters; especially those that allow me to capture images for perfect flat stitching in post.

In previous posts, for example here, I have discussed the Laowa Magic Shift Converter and illustrated its potential when coupled to a Canon TSE 24mm Tilt/Shift lens.

In this post I'll discuss a more flexible arrangement, that allows different focal lengths to be used.

The lenses I've explored are from the Mamiya 645 family, ie 35mm, 45mm, 80mm and 150mm. Although I've dropped using the 35mm as, unfortunately, I seem to have a bad copy, with one side of the image rather distorted, compared to the other side.

In this test I used the 45mm Mamiya 645 lens.

The  camera set up I used loks like this:

That is: a Canon R, coupled to the Laowa EF to RF Magic Shift Converter, coupled to the Kipon 645 to EF shift adapter, coupled to my 45mm Mamiya 645 lens. With this arrangement my total shift is of the order of 50mm, ie 25mm in each direction.

Of course the MSC transforms the 45mm focal length into about a 63mm lens.

Having set up the composition, checked the exposure over the shift range, set focus and aperature (f/11 in this test), it was a simple matter to capture 5 images:

• Kipon +15mm + MSC 10mm
• Kipon + 15mm + MSC 0mm
• Kipon 0mm + MSC 0mm
• Kipon -15mm - MSC 0mm
• Kipon -15mm -  MSC 10mm

Once captured, the five images were processed and Pano mergered in Lightroom. The resultant (flat stitched) pano was 18636 x 4664, ie just short of 87 mega pixels.

This is achievable because of the optics in the MSC, which expands the Kipon’s 30mm physical maximum shift by 1.4.

At the Canon R's pixel pitch of 5.34 microns, this is like using a camera with nearly a 100mm x 24.9mm sensor, ie 36 + 30*1.4 + 20. Graphically looking like the comparison below: where the red rectangle represents a normal full frame sensor, and the blue the 'Ultra Digital Xpan' created with the above set up.

As for the test image, it looks like this (scaled to display in the blog). The 35mm full frame, horizontal, field of view equivalent is similar to a 23mm focal length:

So, I think, finally, I've found my ideal digital XPan set up. If I want to create an ultra wide, 4:1, flat stitched, pano I can use the MSC with the Kipon shift adapter, converting my Mamiya lenses into a 49mm, 63mm, 112mm, 210mm set . If I only want to emulate an XPan aspect ratio, I would replace the MSC with a simple EOS to R adapter (which I have), allowing me to shoot at 45mm, 80mm and 150mm (as my 35mm is not really useable). Finally, with the MSC arrangement I could also shift in two directions using the Kipon and MSC in combination, ie to create various medium format equivalent aspect ratios.

As usual I welcome any comments on this post or any of my posts.