Dave Cohen wrote:

I must be losing it in my old age. So I'm standing alongside this guy who is
carefully composing an image of this beautiful old church and is using the
swing and tilt feature of his 4x5 to include the steeple. Now using the
technique described in this post, what exactly do I do, get close to the
subject and take a shot of a few bricks (or stones at a time), climb up a
ladder to shoot the steeple, then stitch the whole thing together.
Since I'm using dial-up, I can't view the sample. I'm confident it's very
good and I have stitched landscape views myself, so I'm both aware of and
certainly not opposed to stitching as a useful technique, I just think the
rational of this post is missing something.
Dave Cohen

You would set up your camera at the same spot the guy shooting the 4 x
5 view camera would. With the 4 x 5 camera he can get the whole photo
in one shoot, with the digital it would take a number of shoot, the
camera stays in the same spot but is aimed at different parts of the
church. The software can stitch the photo as if a view camera was
being used, at least the shift part which is what corrects for the
perspective.

Most people do not understand how a shifting lens works, basically the
camera lens that is used with a view camera has a much larger field of
view then the film, if you want to shoot something like a church you
point the camera straight at the horizon and then shift the lens up or
the film down. You could get the same effect by using a 8 x 10 sheet
of film in the 4 x 5 camera, not shifting the lens and cropping the
photo.

I think using a view camera is a great way to get a fantastic photo and
am not arguing against it. What I am trying to say is that there is a
lot more that you can do with a digital camera then many people are
aware of.

Scott