Eh, technically it's more of an extended 35mm camera than a cropped MF
The aspect ratio is about 1:2.7 or so, which is ridiculously wide, wider than most widescreen movie formats. a 24MP digital image cropped into that ratio ends up being 13MP or so. And then there is the issue of displaying the image. Most image sharing sites, PC screens and mobile devices don't really agree well with something that wide and the best way of presenting them is printing.
I quite like 1:2.33 aspect ratio though, works relatively well in the digital world too.
Quote:A tilt shift lens can also be used for panoramas, but then again you do not see the entire image in the field.
Yes, and you need to take two pictures and stitch them afterwards - if you go that way, you also can stitch when you turn, or use a smartphone for quick and (seldom) dirty panoramas. You can even put a Seitz roundshot on rails and make a rather big resolution picture by moving along a railway car while the film is synchronized with camera movement.
But like obican mentioned, to view this "banderoles" is not so easy and to print them you need a printer with rolls.
Distortion is no issue with XPan cameras, they use medium format lenses and just cut a lot of the possible image circle. You can say "cropped MF" but then, every format is cropped - the sensors are cut of a bigger dice, the films were also cut of very large rolls, they crop even a loaf of bread
Quote:....
Distortion is no issue with XPan cameras, they use medium format lenses and just cut a lot of the possible image circle. You can say "cropped MF" but then, every format is cropped - the sensors are cut of a bigger dice, the films were also cut of very large rolls, they crop even a loaf of bread 
Maybe we should start a discussion on the equivalence of a cropped load of bread <ROFL>....
Kind regards, Wim
Don't you mean the difference between chopped and cropped bread

?
Kind regards,
Reinier
Quote:Don't you mean the difference between chopped and cropped bread
?
Kind regards,
Reinier
<ROFL>
Chopped bread is multi-cropped

.
Kind regards, Wim
We could also compare the compression rates of Full Loaf, cropped and chopped bread. Okay, Dutch bread wins in terms of compression rate as it is only little higher than an average stamp after compression, no matter how cropped/chopped before.
Bit late, but I wasn't able to visit Photozone the last couple of weeks.
LOL!!
Kind regards.
Reinier