there is a difference in image quality between backs...
If you are shooting product I guess Phase is the way to go, but for people photography I felt the Phase images were to sharp! Leaf images look very film like.
Though I didn't test the same backs you mentioned, I did test the P-30, A-22, A-65 and H3D.
IMO, all three of these companies, Leaf, Phase and Hasselblad have different mindsets even though they are going after the same market.
Phase really is a stand alone system, with mature software and an almost proprietary file. The P-30 file is way different than any P-25 file I have seen, a little softer, a lot smoother with excellent skin tones and virtually no noise even underexposed almost a stop. Phase seems very relient on their software as set up on the back is simple and all of the fine tuning is going to be in the software.
The strength of the Phase is in the software and the maturity of C-1.
Leaf is more hardware based with the back allowing a lot of settings in set up and relying on 3rd party software like lightroom, pscs, RD to really make robust solid software. Leaf software works and V-8 tethers well but LC10 is still a work in progress, though it is getting better. What I like about the A-22 is I can get different looks in different software, pscs is grainy and film like, RD and LC10 is smooth and a little more digital and lightroom really offers amazing possbilities.
To me Hasselblad is the wild card. The file is good, though not really better than the Leaf or the Phase, though not worse either. The back is slightly slower, the oled screen slightly off color, the software IMO needs a refresh, much like Leaf V-8 needs an update.
Actually Flexcolor is pretty good software, though Hasselblad really needs to address a full rez preview and the color of the thumbnails. It seems to me that Hasselblad's direction is going for the all in one system, moving camera and back together as one package and one complete solution.
It really is hard to decide on any one back, though for overall work I'd take my A-22 over the A-65 and 75 and actually wouldn't trade it for two A-75's. I think it's that flexible and it's very stable and fast, even shoot non compressed.
The P-30 file to me is the most correct right out of the camera, just dead on beautiful requiring only slight exposure corrections, process and ship.
For on figure fashion, retail and even beauty the P-30 is a really nice file and since C-1 is so stable batch processing is very easy. I interested to see what V4 will be like if there really is a speed bump. For a large retail project, the P-30 would save me at least 3 hours a project in setting up the file look compared to what I saw from the other backs.
For software I still think Lightroom will eventually be the great equalizer, as it brings options that I have never seen from any raw processing stand alone software.
Once again, IMO.
JR
http://www.russellrutherford.com/
