u/Big_Rip4015

This isn't going to affect every one of you Hasselblad shooters out there, but for some of you, maintaining color space throughout your post-processing flow is important. It is also yet another jarring example of engineering sloppiness in the Phocus for Mac team that I'm pretty certain would not be tolerated by a team designing and building the cameras and lenses.

The short version: because the Phocus team clearly can't be bothered by testing their software, they mis-labeled the two Hasselblad RGB icc profiles that Phocus installs on your Mac. What it means is that if you want to be able to control your exports from Phocus and LRC in terms of color space, or want to soft-proof images in Hasselblad RGB colorspace in LRC before export, you can't. And ironically it's not all the icc profiles they provide that are mis-labeled. Just these two, arguably the two most likely to be of use to photographers.

Anyway, the post with more detail is here, and includes a link to a small script which will fix the two profiles. The script is completely open source, so you can go and see what it is going to do, and also has an "uninstall" rollback feature.

There's a long backstory to this, but the short version is that when importing images into Phocus, if you do not uncheck the "Use embedded if available" checkbox, HNCS will not be applied to the imported image(s). If you uncheck the "Use embedded if available" checkbox, then 95% of the time your images will have HNCS applied to them when you import them into Phocus.

There are, however, some notable exceptions to that rule: the other 5%. I haven't figured out why yet, because it doesn't make any sense. Minimalist images shot with wider apertures (f/2.8 to f/9.5) fall into that 5%. The less detail there is in the image and the wider the aperture, the more likely it is that Phocus will not apply HNCS to the image(s).

For folks like me who are using Phocus to apply HNCS to our images, it's probably wise to manually apply it to every image and make sure it is applied before you do anything else. Also remember that you should not do any edits to the image before manually applying that profile. Applying the profile will wipe any other adjustments you've already made.

The slightly longer and sadder version of the backstory is here.

To say that this boggles my mind is probably the biggest understatement of the week. Hasselblad's marketing leans incredibly heavily on HNCS. People within one of Hasselblad's engineering departments have spent years of their lives building and refining HNCS. And yet the very software that Mac users have to use to get HNCS does not apply it by default when you import images. That weird 5% bug is one thing, and that's probably just a technical issue that can be fixed. This thing about not getting HNCS by default in Phocus for Mac is just mind-blowing.

Rant over. Message: check that you do actually have HNCS applied before you work on and then export images in Phocus.

So someone I was chatting to last week was asking questions about the Earth Rotation Compensation that the X2D II has. It's a pretty wild thing to build into a camera's IBIS, but it's actually pretty cool, and the math does work out, albeit not quite to the extent that HB's marketing makes out.

Short version, it does actually work, if you do things the right way.

https://blog.tonalphoto.com/x2d-ii-earth-rotation-compensation/

I posted a few days ago about the fact that firmware v1.3.16.1 now recorded focus distance in the file metadata. I shared the post on my socials and one reader asked about whether there was a way to get the focus distance for images shot before this update so that LRC and C1 could do better lens corrections.

I'd known about some makerdata fields that had info from which one could calculate focus distance. Did some tests, shot a couple of hundred test shots on 5 lenses, and went and built a tool for it. It's a simple command line tool, which I know sounds daunting for a lot of folks, but the README file included walks through the steps carefully.

The tool is open source - the code is available for inspection in the GitHub repo, and there's a release you can just download. It will make a copy of your original 3FR (it never modifies your original) calculate the focus distance from the makerdata, correct for the lens you're using if the lens is already in the calibration database, and write that to the copy of your original, which you can then pull into LR or C1, and have the lens corrections properly applied for that focus distance.

Link to the post explaining what I did is here, complete with a shot of the wife's blonde dog that you can toggle to see the effect.

Link to the tool is here

Lola.

X2D II, XCD 55V + 9mm ext @ f/5.6, 1/30s, ISO25K6 (before HNNR)

With all the justified excitement about C1 announcing support for 3FR files from the X2D II, every HB-related forum was flooded by folks posting shots comparing the colors. I was one of those posters 😀

Anyway, the engineer in me finally got my attention and I decided to do a more calibrated review of the color rendering in each of the apps. My conclusion: I personally prefer the Phocus HNCS render, but that's just me. You can and should use whichever one works best for you. But it is pretty interesting to see the three different approaches side by side.

Post is up at https://blog.tonalphoto.com/phocus-capture-one-lightroom-hasselblad-measured/

There's also a link in the post to a complete technical writeup that goes into a lot more depth than the post does.

Looks like the promised support for C1 tethering is closer with the most recent X2D II firmware upgrade. Capture One doesn’t see it yet, just tested, so I assume we’ll see a small update from them soon.

I got tired of all this BS about Hasselblad shipping firmware updates and not telling anyone, and not providing a notification service you can subscribe to. Or anything. So I just built a tracker, and guess what, it caught a firmware update for the 35-100E that dropped yesterday.

The entire release note says "optimised the sound experience during autofocus," but guaranteed that's not the only thing they meddled with. They're just terrible at release notes. So there don't seem to be any major drivers to upgrade, unless you wanted a different sound for autofocus, I guess.

Ok, so anyway, the tracker I've built lists every X system body lens and adapter with its current firmware. It records the date of each version that first showed up, which Hasselblad, of course, publishes nowhere, so you get a real change log going back a few months instead of one PDF per product.

The URL to the tracker page is https://blog.tonalphoto.com/hasselblad-firmware-tracker/

There's a link on the tracker page if you want to sign up for firmware update notifications. It is the only thing that that particular list will do. You won't get any other mail other than when new firmware drops for one of the products listed on that tracker page.

8298 shutter actuations. Fully functional. Cosmetically excellent condition with only two tiny scuff marks on the edge of the lens hood (see photos - I tried to show them but they are tiny). The optics are in perfect condition. No hazing, no moisture inside the lens, no scratches. Zoom is fully functional and smooth.

Comes in the original box, with the original HB front and rear caps, and with a set of Maven magnetic mount filters. Filters are a LPL, a 3ND, 6ND, 10 ND and a "splash guard".

Images are here: https://imgur.com/a/5E7RYyv

This is an amazing lens, and I've loved using it as you can see from the shutter count. Images are tack sharp, and the AF-C is the best out of the entire line of XCD lenses that support it. I've just gone back to using my primes and have barely used the 35-100 in the last few months, not because of the lens, but just that the primes better suit my shooting style. I have been reluctant to sell it because I waited so long to get it, and did enjoy using it. I just don't see myself using it again soon though, and it seems silly to be sitting on a lens like this when someone else could get better use from it.

$4,199 using PayPal G&S only. Includes that magnetic filter set, and shipping UPS insured, with signature required on delivery.

Comment and then message if you are interested.

For those who missed it so far: Capture One 16.8.3 now opens Hasselblad 3FR files natively, from the X2D II 100C, X2D 100C, and the CFV 100C back. Formal partnership, joint press release, quotes from both CEOs, the whole shebang.

However, before anyone migrates a library, the fine print is worth reading.

1. The color is Capture One's own: Hasselblad's announcement email says it outright: images "will render Capture One's signature true-to-life colour". HNCS appears nowhere in any of the launch materials, from either company. If HNCS is why you shoot Hasselblad, Phocus remains the only way to get it.
2. No HDR: Capture One has no HDR color management at all, so 3FRs processed in C1 render SDR only.
3. 3FR only: FFF is not supported, so tethered captures stay in Phocus. C1's own tethering is promised for later in 2026.
4. And buried in the release notes: Hasselblad RAWs don't carry focus-distance metadata, so C1 applies generic lens corrections until a Hasselblad firmware update adds the data. Which means, inter-alia, that Lightroom and DxO have probably been applying distance-generic corrections to your files all along too. C1 is just the first vendor to say so in writing.

Hasselblad, on the record to PetaPixel: "This partnership isn't a replacement for Phocus."

Quite how one campaign produced a press release promising "the same true-to-life color Capture One users know and love" and a landing page claiming "Hasselblad's color rendering is faithful from the moment you import", they alone will know.

Full post: https://blog.tonalphoto.com/capture-one-hasselblad-raw-support/

It’s been a rough few months here in central Virginia. We’ve had less than 1/3 of the average rainfall for the last 12 months.