Almost an year passed from the first “universal” Hasselblad Phocus release that was able to open third-party RAW files… I have an earlier article related to Phocus, located here.
Today I downloaded the new 2.5.5 version and noticed that a very little to nothing has changed…
I shoot with a Nikon, and was very happy when Hasselblad announced the ability of Phocus to open NEF files. I was very disappointed when I realized that with NEF files I can’t make some essential corrections: Recovery, Shadow fill, Clarity, Noise filter and Lens corrections. While I can live without some of these, I find the Lens correction to be very important, especially when I shoot with wide angle lens.
I often use a Nikkor 14-24/2.8 lens and it’s amazingly sharp, but at some aperture settings, very strong amount of chromatic aberrations appear, and these need to be corrected to obtain a high quality image. This, unfortunately, can’t be done with Phocus, and this fact is the main reason for me to prefer any other converter, that has the ability to correct chromatic aberration. (I own a licensed copy of Capture One, I love it and I use it for serious work.)
Here is an image, shot with Nikon D3x and Nikkor 14-24/2.8 lens, this is the whole frame:
And here are two 100% crops from the top-left corner of the above image, processed with Phocus 2.5.5 and Capture One 5.2:
The difference is clearly visible. While Phocus can’t remove chromatic aberrations from NEF files, Capture One has done a pretty good job on this.
I expected that after an year from the Phocus 2.5 announcement, some of the hidden corrections should be revealed, at least the lens corrections tool. This was not done till today’s 2.5.5 revision. Hope it will be done in the near future.
