Ultra Wide 'digital XPan'

This post is really an excuse to play around with my new laptop. 

As a lifelong Windows guy, I finally took the plunge and got myself my first Apple Laptop: a MacBook Air M5 with 1TB storage and 24GB of memory.

So, today's experiment was how to create an ultra wide 'digital XPan', using sensor bracketing, and process the result in Lightroom on my new laptop. In fact, the set up converts any 35mm mirrorless full frame (or APS-C) into a semi X-Y shifting ‘technical’ camera set up. 

I used two adapters. First, one that is integrated into the Laowa 15mm f/4.5 Zero-D Shift EF mount lens, with a +/- 11mm shift, with an advertised image circle of 65mm:

Between the lens and my Canon R, I used a Laowa EF-RF Magic Shift Converter (MSC), which has the impact of converting the 22mm shift of the Zero-D to just over 30mm.The zero-D image circle is taken up to some 90mm. Thus, by shifting left and right, and taking a centre image, I can realise a flat, digital image that is 66mm x 24mm. It also means, because of the MSC glass, I now have a 15x1.4mm focal length lens, ie 21mm. 

In this experiment I didn't shift the MSC, which I could have done by 20mm, ie +/- 10mm, in either the horizontal or vertical direction. For example, creating an 86x24mm digital, flat stitched, image. Note, some vignetting will occur if shifting orthogonally, but this will be camera specific. 

The advantage of using the above adapters, is that their shifts are controlled by a precision rotating mechanism.

Of course using the Zero-D with the Magic Shift potentially can't be ignored in terms of image quality, but as photography is subjective, let's look at a test I just carried out.

The test stitched image is 12473x4474, which at a Canon R pitch of 5.36 microns, gives us a near perfect XPan digital emulation, ie 66.85mm x 23.98mm. Note, in this test I only shifted the Zero-D. 

But what about image quality, especially in the corners?

The following are crops from the four corners, that I think look OK, ie noting that there is no distortion correction applied in Lightroom:

So, there you have it, in addition to using Mamiya 645 lenses to create the digital sensor equivalent of an XPan, I can now carry around a 21mm digital XPan or an X-Y shifting camera, thanks to two Laowa technologies.

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