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Author Topic: Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back  (Read 3317 times)

ericstaud

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« on: May 01, 2009, 02:55:29 pm »

I am writing here to get some info out to, and response from, other architectural/landscape photographers working with Phase one backs.

When I switched back to Phase One, after two years with Leaf, I had gotten used to the notion that the color casts associated with shooting a MFDB on a technical camera could be written out of a RAW file and the new file could then be processed through the processor of your choice.... forever.  This is true of both Leaf and Sinar.

In Capture One the color cast correction is written as a processing instruction that is only applied to the output, not to the RAW file.

When I switched back to Phase this was a big concern for me.  If Phase One ever went under (in the next 40 years) I would simply loose the ability to process any of the RAW files I had shot with their digital backs.  The solution I was told in November of 2006 was to output a DNG file from the Phase One software in the upcoming Capture One 4.0.  A month later, 4.0 came out and I then had the ability to output LCC corrected DNG files, free of color casts, that could be processed in any RAW converter.  Additionally, the files were much more archival, and so I began converting any long term projects to DNG (projects I might work on for 5-10 years or more).

Somewhere in the past 6 months or so Phase One re-wrote their processing pipeline and removed the LCC correction from the DNG files.  The way I like to think of this is that I now have several thousand proprietary Phase One negatives that can only be printed in a Phase One enlarger.  Not exactly what I signed up for.  If Phase One goes out of business I'm out of luck.  There is currently no plan at Phase One to fix this.  I don't think it's even on the bottom of the priority list.

If this is important to you, then please contact your dealer to let them know.  Also create a support case titled "feature request" on the Phase One site.  In part, Phase One prioritizes issues like this based on the sheer numbers of customer requests.  I post this here because I would guess most people are not thinking about the viability of their long term archive every time they hit that LCC button.  You should know you have bought into a proprietary system that may not be around years from now.

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tho_mas

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2009, 03:45:39 pm »

Eric,
I am going to support your matter... for general reasons.
But...
- The LCC is not stored in the RAW file, it's stored in the DNG file (as you said)... so if Phase goes down you'll have a problem anyway as no other porcessor supports Phase files as good as C1
- If you store the LCC shots along with the RAW files you can always correct colour cast (e.g. in Photoshop)

So why don't you just store the current version of C1 and an entire computer (a laptop maybe) with C1 installed on it. In one of my cupboards I have an old barbone computer with nothing on it as a clean installed OS, C1 (3.6 something, I guess) and a DNG converter.
Too, I store all 16bit TIFs processed out of Capture One in the camera profile without sharpening (this is why I never do a final editing in C1 as I want to preserve a proper histogram in the first step; colour cast is corrected in these TIFs of course and I define the general look, but nothing - or few - that can't be corrected afterwards in the 16bit TIF). Large archive on the long run... but TIF is the only way to be "safe" I think. And storage is the least expensive part of the entire workflow.
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ericstaud

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2009, 04:00:46 pm »

Quote from: tho_mas
- The LCC is not stored in the RAW file, it's stored in the DNG file (as you said)... so if Phase goes down you'll have a problem anyway as no other porcessor supports Phase files as good as C1

DNG's created in early versions of C1 4 don't have color casts.  DNG's created in 4.5 or later do have color casts.

The DNG files without color casts can be processed anywhere.  There is no LCC information stored in those files.  The lens cast simply doesn't exist.
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tho_mas

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2009, 04:09:15 pm »

Quote from: ericstaud
The DNG files without color casts can be processed anywhere.  There is no LCC information stored in those files.  The lens cast simply doesn't exist.
yes... my fault: LCC is not "stored" in the DNG, the colour cast is removed in the DNG ...
« Last Edit: May 01, 2009, 04:09:34 pm by tho_mas »
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ericstaud

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2009, 04:25:06 pm »

Quote from: tho_mas
yes... my fault: LCC is not "stored" in the DNG, the colour cast is removed in the DNG ...

I would be even happier if Phase would be able to write a new IIQ file without the lens casts.
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tho_mas

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2009, 04:45:16 pm »

Quote from: ericstaud
I would be even happier if Phase would be able to write a new IIQ file without the lens casts.
That would be really great! Right from the LCC tool so that it is copied directly inside the same folder/session... like: "duplicate corrected RAW and name as CFxxxxLCC.IIQ"
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archivue

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2009, 05:02:22 pm »

for archival reason, it looks safier to store a tiff 16 bits anyway...


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JDG

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« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2009, 05:22:53 pm »

Quote from: archivue
for archival reason, it looks safier to store a tiff 16 bits anyway...

Agreed, although 8bit is generally enough unless you are going to do significant curve modification in Photoshop later on.    DNG is really not good way to archive MFDB files, even if the LCC is applied to it.  DNG just will not hold the same image quality, and at least with phase one files they become much larger on disk.  Take a Phase One file with smooth tonal transitions and convert it to DNG then process the the DNG to a a tiff and the original IIQ into a Tif.  The difference in quality is pretty astounding.
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tho_mas

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Shooting Architecture with a Phase One back
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2009, 05:39:41 pm »

Quote from: JDG
Agreed, although 8bit is generally enough unless you are going to do significant curve modification in Photoshop later on.
depends on the colour space the files are stored in. sRGB: sure, might be okay. AdobeRGB: already critical. Camera profile or ProPhotoRGB: no way, 16bit is a must here! As we talk about an archive storing the "originals" (or TIF-copies of the original RAWs) I'd highly recommend 16bit even if it doubles the file size.
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Geoffrey

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« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2009, 05:54:51 pm »

Quote from: tho_mas
depends on the colour space the files are stored in. sRGB: sure, might be okay. AdobeRGB: already critical. Camera profile or ProPhotoRGB: no way, 16bit is a must here! As we talk about an archive storing the "originals" (or TIF-copies of the original RAWs) I'd highly recommend 16bit even if it doubles the file size.

Why is sRGB might be OK, and AdobeRGB already critical? My understanding was that Adobe RGB had a broader gamut than sRGD, and was thus a better space in which to store TIFF files. Is this wrong?

Agreed about 16 bit, to be sure!
« Last Edit: May 01, 2009, 05:55:22 pm by Geoffrey »
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tho_mas

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« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2009, 06:08:19 pm »

Quote from: Geoffrey
Why is sRGB might be OK, and AdobeRGB already critical? My understanding was that Adobe RGB had a broader gamut than sRGD, and was thus a better space in which to store TIFF files. Is this wrong?
With regard to 8bit sRGB might be okay. But 8bit and AdobeRGB or bigger colour spaces... that does not fit very well - 16bit is the way to go here.
Beside this: even AdobeRGB is too small to cover the colour space of the camera (disregarding the question which colours in a certain shot were actually captured). As in C1 the camera profiles work as input profiles I see absolutely no sense in any conversion here. So I embed the camera profile in the TIF. Mostly I convert directly from the camera profile to a certain printer profile later on in Photoshop. Or, for other purposes, convert to a common colour space like AdobeRGB, ECI-RGB or any ISO-CMYK profile or whatever is needed.
This way I always store everything that was captured (so no clipping caused by conversion in e.g. AdobeRGB) and at the same time in a colour space that is not bigger as needed (as it is the case with ProPhotoRGB containing a huge part of theoretical colours).
« Last Edit: May 01, 2009, 06:36:39 pm by tho_mas »
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