Long term strategy for Hasselblad H users with a Phase One digital back.

[JV]

I am one of those.  I shoot a Hasselblad H1 with a Phase One P30+ digital back.  I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  Should I stick with my H1, go entirely Hasselblad or entirely Phase One?  I don't believe I have made up my mind yet.  I will probably await the announcement of new products on Photokina but in the meanwhile any thoughts, pros and cons, you might have on this are appreciated. 

[darylgo]

Decisions.  Decisions.  I am going through the same thing, I shoot Contax 645 and I love the camera but it is just a matter of time before parts-issues or technology leaves it in the dust.  The closed Hasselblad system is very appealing because the technology is cutting edge but the limitations of a closed system are unappealing. 
Nobody in MF is assured their system won't face obsolescence when companies go out of business.  At this time I would favor Phase because it is not closed, a back can be adapted to any of several supported systems.  Putting the back first also allows you to choose a camera that matches your shooting style, need for automation or manual control, need for extensive system accessories or lenses, autofocus, price etc.  If you own Hasselblad H lenses your investment might be better served with a H3, H4.  The H4-40 with 35-90 is very appealing for 20k.  Rental is a great way to try out the different systems and may make the decision easier, dealers can often help also.  That's all folks!!!   

[JV]

I just read the LL First Look Report on the Pentax 645D.  Very appealing and very promising as well, especially if the Pentax 645D indeed becomes available later in Fall as mentioned.  I guess the long term strategy of Pentax is still very unclear but given the price tag this could potentially become the best value for money MF solution.

[BrendanStewart]

Well the H3DII-31 is the same projected price of the Pentax i believe. The lenses are more expensive sure, but can be had at almost half off on the used market.

Something worth investigating...

[Guy Mancuso]

Something to think about here is you have a Phase back and to go Phase it is a mount swap and just sell your Hassy body. If you go all Hassy you have to sell H1 and Phase Back and buy new Hassy body and back. Not counting lenses here but just showing you your choices. Selling used backs is not a profit making adventure. Maybe best case is start looking at what trade in might be available on either side of the fence.

Than you need to figure all your lenses if you only have a few than choices are a little bit easier but if your loaded for bear than the choices get harder. But you are facing a wall at some point. I went all Phase and very happy with that decision and you need to look at everything involved.

[JV]

The H3DII-31 is definitely also good value for money and would make sense in my case because I get to keep my lenses (I have 3 lenses in total).  Switching body and lenses to Phase One would have costed me $6630 with the recent Hasselblad trade in program of Phase One that ended on 8/31.  That is not counting the mount change which would have been an additional $3K.  The mount change would have been free if I had upgraded my back at the same time from P30+ to P40+ but the upgrade itself would have been $10K.  I agree with the statement above that selling used backs is not a profit making business.

[paul_jones]

i have been thinking the same thing. i have a p40+ with a h1 kit.

but after looking into it, i guess the h1 is the most practical system still out there for me.
i checked out the mamiya/phase camera, and although its getting more and more appealing (leaf lenses/ vertical grip, etc), the body still isnt as nice as the H1 IMO.

all the rental places have hassy gear. there has been no major upgrades to almost all medium systems (except i guess the pentax), that the h1 camera still does the job of focusing and clicking perfectly well.

the pentax looks great, but if you shoot tethered or deal with very large amounts of shots, i would be worried about the software support. theres no leaf shutter lenses (maybe the old ones work).

i cant see why you need to worry about h1s running out, they are everywhere. no shortage on ebay. i cant see that changing for quite a while. you p30 will look long in the tooth well before the body will.
and theres nothing wrong with phase backs on the hassy. almost all rental places use this combo.

paul

[JV]

All very true as well.  With the H1 it is very easy and inexpensive to get a backup body on eBay.  You can switch to another brand of digital back if you want to.  Regarding the Pentax, I don't shoot tethered but I was wondering about the software support as well.  Does it come with any software or does it assume LR by default?

[imagetone]

It's a very relevant question for me. I have an H1 and P25+. I haven't bought more lenses for a while or another body because of the feeling that I will have to choose to go with an integrated system sometime soon.  The money is a big factor in deciding which way to go but either way you're going to end up selling some kit and spending a lot of money. Personally I have other considerations too.

Dealer support - where I am based we have two very good Phase dealers. They are knowledgeable and helpful and seem closely connected to Phase. One of them is also my port of call for all lighting, lens and DSLR rentals. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly now) apart from a couple of H lenses, they don't rent pieces of Hasselblad kit.  Obviously they rent Phase/Mamiya.

We do have a Hasselblad dealer here, they are helpful but they don't rent and I don't think they have the same expertise knowledge of the H digital kit and software that the Phase dealers have of their kit.  In my experience it also seems that Hasselblad's support for the dealers is more ambiguous as their sales guys sometimes seem to like to deal direct with the customer whereas Phase seem to avoid that.

Software - I am an ex-Flexcolor user, the times I have tried to use Phocus (with H-22 files some time ago and with DSLR files recently) it is just so slow on my Macs. I find Capture One very useable, I don't like its aggressive sharpening or the fact that the preview never quite matches exactly what I see in Photoshop (I have sat down with Phase Technical Support on that, but no solution) but it usually does the job very well.  The skin colours I see from the H cameras and Phocus in the Victor magazine, I don't like, but I'm not a fashion photographer.

If all the other factors were equal (cost of switching, dealer support, software and sensor performance, access to rentals) then for me personally an integrated H system would make more sense as I increasingly want to have proper lens corrections and I really like the H system,  lenses and the tilt and shift adapter.  But for me, the other factors are not equal.....

[Doug Peterson]

Software - I am an ex-Flexcolor user, the times I have tried to use Phocus (with H-22 files some time ago and with DSLR files recently) it is just so slow on my Macs. I find Capture One very useable, I don't like its aggressive sharpening or the fact that the preview never quite matches exactly what I see in Photoshop (I have sat down with Phase Technical Support on that, but no solution) but it usually does the job very well.  The skin colours I see from the H cameras and Phocus in the Victor magazine, I don't like, but I'm not a fashion photographer.

There IS a fix for whatever is causing a mismatch between Photoshop and C1. Sometimes color management issues can be hard to track down (especially in Windows and especially when you have more than one monitor), but I can assure you on a properly running machine the color will match perfectly. Maybe another bout of troubleshooting with your dealer present could put that annoyance to rest.

You can change the default sharpening so that all your images start off with sharpening that is more to your liking. They have to pick some factory default but by providing you the ability to set your own default they give you full control. By the way, often one's impression of how "aggressive" sharpening is will depend at least somewhat on which cameras/raw-processors you've used in the past. I don't know your history/experience and so I'm only bringing it up as a point of interest; often dSLR shooters, film shooters (and scanners) or those who have used raw processors which are not as capable of extracting high frequency detail as well as Capture One will have the impression Capture One is "aggressive" in it's sharpening. Regardless - whatever level of sharpening you want can be set as the default. In addition you can make an output recipe which disables sharpening upon output while leaving it active in the viewer so that you can check focus and evaluate files with sharpening but process with zero sharpening.


Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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[imagetone]

Hi Doug

Thanks, I have been using Capture One for a few years and v4/v5 since it was released. (And I like it). I know about defaults, presets etc.  If you have more information on the fix, please mail me. I'm usually on a MacBook Pro with a second (main) monitor. A Phase One tech guy checked out my Capture One and Colorsync setups and settings at a show earlier this year and said it was as it should be and he couldn't explain the difference except that (contrast-wise) some piece of software may be assuming a lower black point on my monitor than it actually measures.

The sharpening isn't a big deal, I just don't like it too much, I don't think I'm the only one. I wouldn't always want to sharpen in C1 anyway because sometimes I sharpen selectively, and sometimes not at all if the files are going to be used for several different media by the client (P25+ files with studio still life seem pretty sharp to begin with). When I do sharpen in C1 some subjects don't suit the "pinprick" effect given to small highlight details.

Tony

[tho_mas]

There IS a fix for whatever is causing a mismatch between Photoshop and C1. Sometimes color management issues can be hard to track down (especially in Windows and especially when you have more than one monitor), but I can assure you on a properly running machine the color will match perfectly.

Doug, hate to disagree here.
Basically, yes, the color management in C1 is totally up to the task and basically colors of the C1 preview and the processed TIF viewed in Photoshop match (as I have demonstrated here some time ago with this layered tif: http://tinyurl.com/36k4n8e ).
The C1 color management is as good as the systems color management as C1 refers to WCS (on WIN) resp. to color sync (on MAC).

BUT...: Adobe uses "black point compensation" for the translation to the monitor profile. Now, if the monitor is not calibrated or if you use the monitor profile provided by the monitor manufacturer (or the system preset on MAC) you won't notice the difference as in these profiles black is L*0. But if your monitor is calibrated (it should be, shouldn't it?) and the measured black point of the display is not L*0 but L*2 or L*3 or whatever ... which is stored in the monitor profile (!)... then you will see differences as Adobes black point compensation handles those values differently. It only affects dark tonal values, in particular, well, the blacks. But it is clearly noticable, especially in images that contain large shadow areas. (You can't even change this behaviour when you switch the color management module in Photoshop from ACE to the respective system CMM... as Photoshop, all Adobe softwares, always use the internal Adobe-CMM for the translation to the monitor profile).
Strictly speaking C1 does it right and Adobe does it different. But as Photoshop is the de facto standard in imaging software (and BPC is a brilliant feature) it would make sense to introduce an option to switch the CMM in C1 so that we can utilize "Adobe CMM". I was asking for this feature since 2 years or so ... but obviously only very few people ask for it so it's probably way low on the priority list at Phase One.

edit:
here is an example...
image viewed in "preview" (above), "C1" (center) and Photoshop (below).
Monitor with the default system monitor profile (black is L*0).
Preview, C1 and Photoshop match: http://drop.io/gbu95jz/asset/werk-jpg

the same with the monitor profile based on the actual calibration (black is L*3).
Preview and C1 match, Photoshop shows better differentiation in the blacks
http://drop.io/gbu95jz/asset/cal-jpg

[tho_mas]

he couldn't explain the difference except that (contrast-wise) some piece of software may be assuming a lower black point on my monitor than it actually measures.

yes, that's exactly the issue I was talking about. A switchable CMM in C1 would solve the problem (we just would have to install "Adobe CMM", which is freeware: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3617 )


edit: I think the attached image makes it clear.
Above Preview (which handles colors the same way as C1), below Photoshop.
The absolut black point is, of course, the same... but Photoshops BPC handles the increase of luminance differently (due to a monitor profile with a black point higher than L*0 here).

[Doug Peterson]

Doug, hate to disagree here.

Never hate when you disagree with me Tho_mas!

My question is whether
1) you'd say the differences tend to be very minor or very significant
2) you see any difference when using a hardware-calibrated monitor such as an Eizo

Perhaps best if we take this off of this thread as it is clearly not relevant to the OP's question.

[robert zimmerman]

I am one of those.  I shoot a Hasselblad H1 with a Phase One P30+ digital back.  I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  Should I stick with my H1, go entirely Hasselblad or entirely Phase One?  I don't believe I have made up my mind yet.  I will probably await the announcement of new products on Photokina but in the meanwhile any thoughts, pros and cons, you might have on this are appreciated. 

back to the original question...

i'm in the same boat. i want an h4 with the p40+ as the back.

everyone in europe uses phase and capture one and the h is pretty much bullet proof, has great optics and is rentable everywhere.
the new phamiya is kind of nice, but you can't rent it everywhere, there's only three ls lenses, and my most used lens is the 50-110 zoom, the mamiya 50-110 zoom is a dog and doesn't have a leaf shutter. another thing that bugs me is: no wlf option on the phamiya...but it does have a right angle grip...

tough call.

[UlfKrentz]

Hi,
We´re one of those, too. We use the h with Leaf backs. Not so easy to find a h1/h2 body to rent these days everywhere in europe. That´s why we have spare bodies. But I do not see a reason to change at the moment - the camera does all we need, though I still don´t understand closing the system. Is the 28mm and the 35-90 so bad that you need the digital correction?  Do you get a spare H4 Body(without back) for instant replacement on set? We had bodies fail often enough to NEVER go without a spare body. So what happend closing the system: We bought two extra bodies second hand, we cannot buy the 28mm, we cannot buy the 35-90. We won´t go the h3 / h4 route. Clever economics, congrats. Ah, I´m sure if it ever should happen that they produce a vertical grip it will of course be for h3 / h4 only. May be I should start thinking over...(and look somewhere else)

Cheers, Ulf

[JV]

Ulf, I am more or less coming to the same conclusion as well, ie. at the moment I will probably not change either.  The H mount is very well supported and will continue to be supported for a very long time. Upgrading would be costly and I would rather spend that type of money on additional lenses or on an entirely different 2nd camera system altogether.  That being said, Hasselblad supposedly are set to unveil new products at Photokina so who knows what might happen and how that could influence things...