Perhaps David Grover would comment on:
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SOFTWARE
In the past, one of the common complaints I used to hear from Hasselblad owners was that the CaptureOne
performed all kinds of magic on the files before rendering them as “without any adjustments”,
which wrongly lead people to believe that PhaseOne image quality was better than Hasselblad”.
After working with the Hasselblad software (Phocus) for several weeks,
there is no question in my mind that the situation (at least today) is the exact opposite.
There is a heck of a lot more image processing going on in Phocus than in C1
before an image is displayed (with all adjustments set to zero) in default mode.
It is crystal clear to me that before Phocus displays an image at its default settings,
with “no adjustments”, the software has already applied a large number of adjustments
to lead to a specific look in terms of contrast, color, saturation, clarity and sharpness.
The look is what I would call Velvia double plus.
Imagine the overly saturated and contrasty look of Velvia film and then punch it up not one, but two more notches.
This is what you get in Phocus with “no adjustments”.
While some photographers might like this look (I assume that many Hasselblad owners do),
personally I think it is grossly overdone. The shadows are way too dark, to the point of loosing much detail,
the upper mid-tones and highlights have too much contrast at first and too much compression on the high end;
finally, the color is so exaggerated that it is totally unreal.
There is a “Repro” mode somewhat hidden in the software menus,
which needs to be activated each and every time you open the application if you want to use it (!).
It is supposedly meant for people who need high color accuracy, such as folks making reproductions of fine art.
The very existence of this mode confirms that the software defaults to a specific look,
rather than accuracy or any semblance of “no adjustments”.
Repro mode is definitely more tame, the contrast is much more controlled and it brings back shadow and highlight detail.
In fact, the contrast can often be a little too low. But even in Repro mode the colors and the saturation are quite exaggerated.
As mentioned above, I had the advantage of being able to see the actual objects and compare them to the calibrated EIZO display in my computer,
as well as actual prints under controlled lighting conditions with a GTI Graphics print viewing station,
so the reader will have to trust me on the following comments:
The default mode with no adjustments in CaptureOne renders deadly accurate color and contrast in the PhaseOne images,
both, on the screen and in prints.
With the Hasselblad files, I had to turn on Repro mode, modify the contrast curve, desaturate the colors and adjust hues
before I could come close to matching the real objects either on the screen or in prints.
But even after doing all that, the PhaseOne colors still looked more accurate (perhaps a real expert in Phocus could do better than me).
