>>3976372You can have a great set-up for landscapes for well under $1000...under $700 if you know what you're buying.
>landscape photography>photo stitchingThis is a common beginner's pitfall. Beginners think that a photo of a landscape should be as broad and wide as the landscape itself. The reality is that photos, even of the most beautiful scenery, still need to have good composition to be seen as good photos. A very small minority of my favorite landscape photos were taken with wide angle lenses. Check the EXIF for this photo to see the focal length it was shot at. I mainly use wide angle for close-ups, and I only ever stitch photos very, very rarely. The last stitch I made was because I wanted to show a crowd of people in context of where they were, and the crowd was just too dispersed to capture in a single photo.
You can have a *very* capable landscape camera with a single lens: either 18-85mm (or thereabouts) for APS-C, or 24-105mm (or thereabouts) for full frame. That focal length range will cover 95% of landscape photography. You don't need primes or fast lenses, since thin depth of field isn't that useful in landscapes. You don't *need* a super wide angle or telephoto lens, but if you pick up a zoom in either of those categories, you'll be set for 100% of landscape photography.
