Shooting Ixpress V96C back tethered to iMac 27

[Dicky]

Hello !

Am new to this forum and to shooting medium format digital ! ...

Just purchased a V96C back for my V system ... Can anyone please be so kind as to confirm if Phocus 2.7.6 is the last version RAW processor to work with the Ixpress backs ?
Will tether to an iMac 27 running on OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite).

Thank you in advance for your kind advice and much appreciated expertise,

Dicky

[Charles S]

Hi Dicky, congrats on your purchase. I am using a V96c as well. I have never been able to make Phocus work with the back but use Flexcolor instead. You can download it from the Hasselblad website

[Charles S]

Hi Dicky, that is a lovely image. I love how the Imacon back renders color. It is also lovely for skin tones, I find that I don't need to use color checker etc to get great results.
I am using an old XP laptop w Flexcolor for tethered shoots. I do mostly portraiture, so the tethering doesn't always work for me, in particular because the data transfer slows the shoot down.
Also, I find that the back is usable outside. I leave the drive box in my bag and the standard cable is long enough to carry the camera in (both) hands. Set to ISO 100 the noise is acceptable and with a 80mm f/2.8 there is enough light coming through to use it in broad daylight.

[Charles S]

I just installed the Phocus version you mentioned on my old laptop to see if it works, and it does, but transferring the images  is a lot slower than Flexcolor. I'll stick w Flexcolor, all I need tethering for is to check focus when I use low DOF on a portrait and from time to time to show the model what is happening. I expert as DNG and then process in LR BTW.

[Greg]

Don't you lose the wonderful color found in Hasselblad RAW files when you convert to DNG?  I'm not sure I'd ever use DNGs other than for my Leica files, since they use that format exclusively.

My work flow uses Phocus (or in your case you could use Flexcolor) and then, if necessary export a TIFF file for completion in Photoshop or Lightroom.  I always thought the main reason to go MFD was for the amazing color files produced.  Going to a DNG seems to me to negate the main benefit of MFD.  Back when I had a CFV16, I used Flexcolor for my workflow, and it seemed to work very well for post processing.

Greg 

[NickT]

Yes I agree. Use Phocus/Flexcolour to do all the heavy lifting (Major tone moves colour correction etc) then export a TIFF

[Charles S]

To be honest; I never tried to do a lot of work in Flexcolor, because I find it a bit clunky compared to LR. I do the exports as 16bit files and it seems a lot better than the 12bit DSLR files. However, you have given me some food for thought, so I will do a side-by-side test to see if it makes a difference.... TBC

[Charles S]

I actually bought the back about a year ago. i am happy to have some people here who are still using it to exchange technical information with.

[Charles S]

Hi Dicky, please share the results. I am very curious.

[NickT]

These look cool:






http://flashhavoc.com/cononmk-deep-parabolic-softboxes-released/

[Charles S]

@greg, so I did the side by side comparison: 1) open flexcolor, convert files immediately to DNG and process in LR vs 2) do some corrections in Flexcolor, then save in TIFF and finish off in LR. Broadly speaking, I don't see the difference, except for files that are critical e.g. super low contrast, seriously underexposed etc. Am I missing something ?

[Greg]

If you don't see a difference, that is all that matters.  When I converted to DNG, I got flat lifeless, and poor quality files.  I guess I was doing something wrong.

Greg 

[Charles S]

Well. it tells me that i should keep the originals on the imagebank until i am happy with the DNG edits, just in case.

[Charles S]

Here is an example of a well exposed image that I converted to dng before editing.

[Greg]

Looks great!  I like it a lot.

Greg