Pentax 645z raw colors

[Emilmedia]

Hey everyone, I'm currently rocking the H3Dii-39 and completely love the colors and how phocus process the image. If i compare to my Canon images i spend around half as much time (sometimes even less) in photoshop editing and correcting colors to get where i want.

Since i'd like an MF camera with higher ISO, but feel the 50c is too expensive i've been checking out the 645z. Does anyone have experience with it and how the colors are? For me this is very important. I for example cant stand the colors from a d800 and read somewhere that the 645z RAW files are not read that well by any program today, and i guess that would make the files look even worse than on the d800?

So my question is has anyone tested it and how the colors are?
Does it work with C1?

[Paul2660]

Personally I have no issues with the D800e or D800 color in C1 or LR, but I realize this is a very individualized to each photographer. 

The D800 and D800e do seem to share a heritage with the newer Sony CMOS that is in the IQ260, Hasselblad  50c and Pentax 645z.  I have not read any reports about trouble with the IQ250 and C1, in fact only good news.  C1 seems to work very well with this new chip. 

I don't think that C1 will work the 645z however, as Phase One has not ever supported the 645D either, at least raw.  I guess you could convert to DNG and open those, however I have not had success with other DNG conversions and C1, even though I have told it's supported.

LR should have it not already full support for the 645z.

Paul

[eronald]

Personally I have no issues with the D800e or D800 color in C1 or LR, but I realize this is a very individualized to each photographer.  

The D800 and D800e do seem to share a heritage with the newer Sony CMOS that is in the IQ260, Hasselblad  50c and Pentax 645z.  I have not read any reports about trouble with the IQ250 and C1, in fact only good news.  C1 seems to work very well with this new chip.  

I don't think that C1 will work the 645z however, as Phase One has not ever supported the 645D either, at least raw.  I guess you could convert to DNG and open those, however I have not had success with other DNG conversions and C1, even though I have told it's supported.

LR should have it not already full support for the 645z.

Paul

I guess you will get D800-quality from LR out of the Z.

Phase usually has better color in C1 but they can be forgiven for not donating it to the competition.

Does Pentax have a proprietary converter? There is also Irident which is usually at the top of the pack, and fairly cheap.

Edmund

[jerome_m]

Since i'd like an MF camera with higher ISO, but feel the 50c is too expensive i've been checking out the 645z.

The H3D-39 is relatively poor in low light (as any MF without micro-lenses), but an H4D-40 or even H3D-31 is not that much worse than the 50c at iso 1600, if you use Phocus... Maybe that could be an option for you?

[Emilmedia]

Ahh crap. Lets hope the Sony mf rumors are true then.

Jarome: actually not a terrible idea. I did like the whole awesome focus-thingie on the Pentax tho... Not so much on Hassy

[bcooter]

Ahh crap. Lets hope the Sony mf rumors are true then.

Jarome: actually not a terrible idea. I did like the whole awesome focus-thingie on the Pentax tho... Not so much on Hassy

I know C1 will take a S2 dng file but the colors are so far off out of camera that the presets are wicked to even get close.

I assume Phase decided not to play nice with competing brands, though they do a pretty good job on Nikon and Canon.

Personally for the S2 I use Iridient Raw developer for finals, but for web galleries use lightroom. 

Raw developer has better fine tuning and produces a beautiful file, though for large batching for galleries it's a little slow and complicated.  Single images . . . off the scale good on every camera I own.

I would imagine that will be the same with the new Pentax.

IMO

BC

[JV]

Ahh crap. Lets hope the Sony mf rumors are true then.

Who knows?  It would get crowded if Fuji and Sony also join the MF train:

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sr1-an-impossible-rumor-about-the-a7x/

Personally for the S2 I use Iridient Raw developer for finals, but for web galleries use lightroom. 

Raw developer has better fine tuning and produces a beautiful file, though for large batching for galleries it's a little slow and complicated.  Single images . . . off the scale good on every camera I own.

Same here.  I started using Iridient for Fuji X-Pro1, X100s and X-T1.

Then continued using it for the Leica M9.  And now also for the Leica S2.

I realize that Iridient is probably missing quite a bit of functionality of Lightroom but I am only looking for a malleable file and Iridient does deliver that.

I did try a trial version of Lightroom 5 but I didn't think it was better.  I agree with the comment that Iridient does not work well for batch processing. 

[BernardLanguillier]

Another thumb up for iridient developper!

Cheers,
Bernard

[torger]

The 645Z can write DNGs, so any DNG compatible software can open it. However color is much about profiles and processing pipeline. I don't know what the status of the profiles are in various software, although we can be sure that it's not any for the 645Z in C1.

I've made an experiment by converting an 645Z file to an IQ250 raw file through a special software I have, and then you can run in C1. To my eye it looks good. I'm not sure if the sensor response is close enough though so colors will be equal. Not for a real workflow of course, but an interesting experiment to see if there's any special magic in the IQ250 compared to the considerably cheaper 645Z. I cannot yet answer if there's a difference or not, as I have not any test files IQ250 and 645Z shooting the same subject. I'm hoping this will come at some point so we can make a real comparison.

Have you thought about making your own color profiles? It seems to me that many photographers could save a lot of money by trying to make a profile that produces more pleasing colors than the manufacturers/raw converters default. Maybe it's difficult, I don't really know. As a landscape photographer a default "accurate" daylight profile is all I need and have a custom profile for my digital back (which I prefer compared to the manufacturer's profiles), but I guess it's a lot more complex when skin color is in the equation.

Hasselblad has their "Hasselblad Natural Colour Solution" which it's hard to find information about, but I guess is some type of proprietary color model which may be one answer to why they can produce very pleasing color with sensors like the Kodaks which on paper are not as good as the best competition (Dalsa CCDs and Sony CMOSes).

I'm thinking that the 645Z is more an enlarged 135 camera than a small medium format camera, meaning that color and workflow will be more like a 135 camera system, so I would expect that if you find MF skin colors better than most/all 135 cameras it's most likely that you won't be pleased by the 645Z's default rendering. But it could as said be possible to tune it to your liking, as there's probably nothing wrong with the hardware.

[torger]

Oh, another experiment you can do is to open a Pentax 645Z DNG in (the latest) RawTherapee and then load an IQ250 color profile from C1 (RawTherapee supports C1 icc profiles), and then apply a suitable RGB tone curve. That yields a very similar result to C1.

I have just a single raw file with a model to test with, so I can't make much conclusions. It would be great to find some more DNGs from a real studio portrait shoot. If anyone has a link to such downloads I'm interested.

[eronald]

I believe that the RPP converter, Fast Raw Viewer and Rawdigger  can all now read Pentax files (and probably Phase and Hassy too).

Fast Raw Viewer may be of particular interest to pros in a hurry because it is a superfast tool to wade through a folder and choose selects, and it displays those essential *raw* histograms which you need for highlight preservation and ETTR.

Edmund

[orc73]

I guess coming from Hasselblad and Phocus converted files, you will be disappointed with either Pentax or maybe even P1(while p1 has many other advantages).
The in house raw converter does really make the difference. No point of having a great sensor if you don't have the software to convert it.
I do run my files without or sligth adjustments through Phocus, generate tif, import to LR. You could take the raws to LR directly, the files will look completely different.
Phocus as such sucks, they just have great conversion. c1 would be much better, if the color profiles are good.
You should shoot some portraits with your cameras and compare.
As of iso I often use the h4d-40 at iso 1600, did not have the chance to compare it to 50c - iso 6400 like iso 400 on the h4d-40, yes I do want it.