I have been toying for a few weeks with a Seitz Roundshot D3. In case you haven’t heard of it, the Seitz is a state of the art super high resolution panoramic camera based on a DALSA scanline sensor. Just to give an idea, the resolution that one can achieve is staggering. Vertically the sensor captures 7500 pixels, while horizontally, 360 degree panoramas are well in excess of 30,000 pixels on average! The resulting images have an average size of 500Mb in RAW format at 48bit. The image size is dependent on the lens used and the degrees of the panorama. It is also possible to use up to 50mm of vertical shift, thus merging 2 shots and creating an effective vertical resolution of 13,500 pixels. The Roundshot comes bundled with a tablet PC that needs to be tethered to the pano head motor of the D3 via gigabit ethernet connection.
I won’t delve into specifications as those can be obtained at the Seitz website. I will offer a few impressions based on some tests that I performed in order to get familiar before I start using it on the road. First and foremost the build quality is truly outstanding. Mechanically it is on the same par as cameras from ALPA and Linhof. The outer body of the sensor housing as well as the battery and pano head motor units have a special rubber coating that help prevent the camera body from overheating in direct sunlight, and it actually works.
The camera body is precision machined to very small tolerances. Under practical use, levers and latches provide a very reassuring clicking sound when tightened. The camera body is attached to an optical bench similar to that of a Large Format camera. Each lens has different rotation nodal points that need to be set on the optical bench. The lens I have been using most during my testing is a Hasselblad CFi 40mm, that requires an extra long optical bench as seen in the photographs below.
The operation of the camera is completely driven by the bundled software application that in the case of the system I am using is a Motion Computing branded Tablet PC. In my opinion, the weak link of the whole package is the tablet PC; while the processing power is adequate (the CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.5Ghz) the screen on the other hand is virtually unusable outdoors and completely pointless in sunlight despite I use a screen sunshade. During my testing I found myself having to disconnect the Ethernet cable and find a spot in the shade or indoors to check exposure and correct focus; something that is less than ideal when using the camera in a field or on top of a mountain, let alone in relatively crowded areas. I feel this is a severe limitation, something that Seitz should have put some more thought on when offering this solution. I guess one could eventually switch to a better Tablet that has a better screen contrast. The other weak link as of now is the software controlling the camera. Despite being quite functional and easy to use it is still a V.1 release and it shows. There is nothing wrong with it per se, although it is too basic for such a powerful and complex camera as the Roundshot D3. It needs to be more flexible especially since as of now .DNG files in excess of 30,000 pixels can’t be processed using Adobe Camera Raw or anything else out there. Larger files need to be processed using the Seitz software which is frankly not comparable to ACR when it comes to fine tuning control.
Seitz keeps updating the software and will eventually get Adobe to support the larger .DNG files, but that’s probably still several months off. Bottom line the Roundshot D3 is an amazing system that once all the kinks are removed will set the high end standard for digital panoramic photography. In the coming weeks I will begin posting a portfolio section dedicated to panoramic imagery.
