With adequate processing power it seems like in-camera HDR and panorama images would always be better than what could be composited in post, because:
- The camera can use inertial sensors to align the images, instead of having to stitch them based on image content.
- The camera can lock exposure, white balance, and other settings that can make post-production compositing more tricky if not explicitly controlled.
- For HDR the camera can bracket intelligently, instead of depending on the photographer to cover an adequate range.
I.e., in theory it seems like the best you could hope for is to manually shoot for post-production what an intelligent camera could do on the fly.
But in practice is this (yet) true? I.e., are there are cameras that do HDR and panoramas so well that a good photographer would opt for the in-camera processing instead of shooting a series and post-processing for the effect?