So you believe that
I think you took me out of context, but what I meant was on the Phase backs I own, I find skin tones and color rendition very exact, actually too exact. In other words if there is slight redness around a part of the face it picks it up to the point of enhancement.
(We have always fixed this in post and every image, still or motion, that has a decent dollar value to it goes through many rounds of post production, but on set, first frame, first impressions mean a lot).
It had nothing to do with shadow detail or anything dark as long as the iso of a p30+ doesn't go over 200. Past 200 I see some detail loss, but that's another topic.
This week we took a day to do some testing of Version 5 to see how it works for an upcoming project and I was more interested in the skin tone editor than anything. I noticed the skin tone presets takes some of the exactness of color away from the look, but mostly by just adding a warm global color which wasn't what I wanted to see.
To be fair, our studio manager is still testing, so we may find it more useful than I see at first glance.
Actually what I really was trying to duplicate is the look of the Canons with a little more detail, given the fact that so many of our advertising projects are shot on continuous backgrounds and we do so much manipulation in post like placing one person from one image into the next.
But, back to the topic, I don't see any problems in shadow detail, though I'm not using the latest generation Dalsa backs.
I think all of this is splitting hairs and it's not just this forum it's everything digital and as with any camera, film or digital, you work around whatever that camera gives you. 10% less highlight recovery, 10% less shadow detail doesn't mean much.
Now with that in mind and working in today's market where speed and flexibility is important, especially with continuous lighting sources, I would like to see something like a high speed sensor upgrade, (sensor, not the whole back).
Anyway . . .
I found this test somewhat informative, but once the testers got past film, the difference between the digital cameras was very small.
http://www.zacuto.com/shootout(warning this is a long video with a somewhat corny intro, but it's informative).
I have a feeling if you lined up Leaf, Blad, Phase and Canon and did this same type of test, you'd see pretty much these same results, but the only way to keep this even is to fill the room with working photographers.