It has been some months since this thread was active!
I still haven't bought a back, but I am about to.
I have ruled out the Sinar MS because of the lack of a screen and a flash card slot. Pity. So, it's down to Hasselblad or Phase.
I spent the last two days testing the Hasselblad 39Mp. First impressions........
(please bear in mind that I can only compare it to the [wonderful!] interface on a Canon 5D)
1. The screen is awful. It's soft and the colour is terrible. On the Canon, I always use Auto White Balance and, quite literally, what you see is what you get. On the Hassie I couldn't find an AWB setting, so I chose flash. The colour looks like daylight film shot under tungsten.
2. When you enlarge the image on the screen to check something, it is nowhere as sharp as the Canon. Even worse, the arrow keys move the image around in leaps, not in tiny increments like on the Canon. So, it's very difficult to obtain a clear view of a precise detail.
3. On the issue of the same arrow keys button. It felt cheap and unsure and I wonder if it would give trouble?
4. Moving around the interface is not very intuitive. A simple action like deleting an image takes too many steps, in my view.
Processing............this is where the fun really begins!
5. Both ACR and Capture One are the products of, quite literally, millions of feedback opinions.
FlexColor is the product of a handful (relatively speaking) of user opinions and it sure shows.
Like me, many of you will have started out on ACR and, at some point, downloaded C1LE. Within minutes you will have been finding your way around it. Try doing that with FlexColor!
a. There is no multi-sample tool, as in ACR, which is essential for my work.
b. You can export to DNG via FlexColor and then use ACR. But, you CANNOT convert the files to DNG using Adobe DNG. It's strictly one way traffic using Hasselblad's closed shop approach.
c. When I did export to DNG, half of the files appeared with the same thumbnail image when opened in ACR4 via Bridge! When I clicked on a file in Bridge, the correct image appeared in the preview window on the right, but the folder of files in the middle remained with over half of them showing a repeat of one image. Weird!
d. The interface is dire, pure and simple.
Why do Hasselblad have to be so bloody minded and myopic? Why not leave the processing to others who just do it better?
I accept that there are many photographers better than me who use FlexColor all the time and will swear by it. But, as someone who uses a Gretag CC in every shot, it just wouldn't work for me.
How much do Hasselblad really gain by all but forcing users to process their images via a second rate (to my way of looking, I hasten to add) piece of software? If they concentrated on the cameras and backs and left the rest to others, they might have more users. This arrogance is now being repeated with the closed shop approach of the H3D.
For me the four shot facility is a major attraction. Without it, the Hasselblad would not be worth consideration. I just wish they were more open minded about access to their files.
Would this camera/back/software combination pass muster if it were a DSLR? Not a hope, in my opinion.
I will shortly be testing a Phase P45.
D.