"I like to keep enhancement to an absolute minimum and would never spend "sixteen hours" in the digital darkroom."

You would if you knew what you were taking about ;-)

(Assuming you mean me as it was I that mentioned 16 hrs in the lightroom) I make sure I do it as soon as possible after arriving home from a shoot so I have the scene in my head (no film or digital capture can recreate what you saw, faithfully, it usually adds some kind of cast or saturation that is 'wrong'.

......................

An average panorama I do broken down in to hours :

2 reviewing all my RAW data and choosing shots, this includes much reflection and re-living the days walking.

1 hour converting RAW shots to 16 bit TIFF on my old PC (it crawls)

2 hours - a simple 50 percent stitch, make and review test prints at 6 x 4 size

5 hours manually stitching and blending the two or three exposures together so they every twig is in line and colours are consistent

(Review test print and full size stitch)

(Not happy, something looks shabby)

4 hours restitching

1 hour dodging and burning and correction for not owning a grad filter (I'm sure PeterH will offer some camera/user that can manage to correctly expose for both sky and ground in one exposure minus a filter.

1 selective sharpening and smoothing and enlarging for print quality.

Bloody waste of time!

Someone buy me an Xpan and a grad filter please and put me and the technorati out of our collective miseries ;-)