Apologies in advance for being a C1 newbie. As a long time Adobe Camera Raw user, I loaded the trial of C1 and have spent several hours testing. I've also watched many of the video tuts, browsed the manual, and Googled issues extensively.
So far I have a farily negative experience, but thought I'd post here for a sanity check. Two "problems" came up immediately. I'm processing raw files from Canon 1dS, 5D2, and 5D3.
It appears C1 can't handle DNG files? It loads them, allows processing, but generates wierd and useless results. It does not access the Canon camera model in the DNG exif. Defaults to some neutral profile. If I manually select the proper Canon profile, the results are strange, highly over saturated colors. Significantly different than the results from the identical CR2 file.
I found some vague references to that problem in various forums via Google. Is that correct? Can C1 not be used effectively on my library of thousands of DNG raw files?
I shot some virgin images of a Macbeth Colorchecker (to get some fresh CR2 files). I shot my first batch under tungsten lamps(2700k). When I load them, the single, generic Canon profile gets applied, but the colors are way off. The red patch is orange, the yellow is very pale, the blue is mostly purple.
That led to the discovery that the C1 generic profiles are "fine tuned" for flash/daylight(around 5000k). So I shot the Colorchecker again under flash. Those 5000K flash images looked much better in C1. Very close to ACR. It appears that the single generic profile supplied with C1 is like an ACR or Xrite "single illuminant" profile, and the further you get from the 5000K sweet spot, the worse it gets.
So I went back to Google, figuring somebody has solved this problem. Maybe someone selling profiles for a range of temps? Maybe there is a profile generator for C1's ICC profiles, something like Adobe's DNG PE or Xrite. I could not find much. Only a few references from 2009 or earlier.
So what am I missing? C1 appears to have a good number of loyal and satisfied users. What do they use for camera profiles? How do they process shots outside of the 5000K range?