capture one

Capture One and the Fujifilm GFX 50S (Final)

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The final workflow update for the GFX 50S and Capture One

A surprise announcement by Capture One at Photokina 2018 changed everything! Starting with version 11.3, Capture One will officially support the Fujifilm GFX series of cameras.

For the past few months, I’ve been putting the native Capture One integration through its paces and all is good. I have no complaints! My workflow using the GFX RAF files is now the same as any of the other raw files from my other cameras.

Now back to taking photos!

Fujifilm GFX 50S, GF 120mm f/4 macro lens

Fujifilm GFX 50S, GF 120mm f/4 macro lens

Fujifilm GFX 50S, GF 32-64mm f/4 lens

Capture One and the Fujifilm GFX 50S (Part 3)

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Over 2000 processed GFX 50S raw photos later, this workflow still holds up.

In part 2, I described a workflow using Adobe DNG Converter and EXIFTool to finagle the GFX 50S raw files into Capture One and correct the colors by applying my custom ICC profile. My initial impression was the processing overhead is fairly minimal and a small price to pay for continuing to use Capture One. I'm happy to report that this remains true even after running thousands of photos through the workflow!

So that's it. We're done, right?

Well, not quite. The last two points on color that I want to touch on are: using other ICC profiles and reproducing film simulation colors.

Using Other ICC Profiles

The ICC profile that I created in part 2 is general purpose and works for most of my shooting situations. Though I do find that sometimes it is a bit on the colder side. Nothing that a tweak to white balance can't fix, but I became curious after seeing other people on the Fujifilm GFX Facebook group use different ICC profiles.

Many were using the Phase One IQ250 ICC profile since it uses a similarly-sized sensor as the Fujifilm GFX 50S. Whether they use the exact same sensor is unclear. However even if they use the same sensor, each manufacturer is likely to tweak the sensors to their in house specifications. Regardless, let's give it a go!

Here's another ICC profile comparison. This time with the Leaf Credo 50, which is also a Sony 50MP 44x33mm CMOS sensor.

It's worth noting that this photo was taken under difficult lighting conditions as far as colors go. While shot in the shade provided by the shipping containers, the blue and orange containers did cast their colors fairly strongly. Obtaining a good white balance by eye was a tough endeavor.

The comparisons show that there really is no right or correct color profile to use; each profile is merely different. Whether that difference adds to the photo's mood or just looks better is all subjective. If the aim is to have perfect color rendition every time, I would use a color checker periodically during a shoot.

Reproducing Film Simulation Colors

I wish that Fujifilm cooked the GFX 50S raw files with the film simulation parameters. The out of camera renders are extremely good and sometimes makes me question why I even bother working with raw files.

DSF1052.OOC_-1200x900.jpg

At the end of the day though, all I really care about is the Classic Chrome look. I have Alien Skin Exposure X2, which has me covered for Acros, Provia, Astia, and Velvia film simulations. VSCO doesn't appear to have a Classic Chrome preset either when I looked (and I wouldn't want to use Lightroom for it anyways). So with my eyeballs and a trial and error, I created a Capture One style that roughly approximates the Classic Chrome look.

For the Classic Chrome style, I used the following settings:

Exposure

  • +10 Contrast
  • +10 Brightness
  • -15 Saturation

High Dynamic Range

  • +10 Shadow

Curve

  • (10, 0) Input, Output

Color Editor

  • -15 Blue Hue
  • -10 Blue Saturation
  • -10 Red Hue
  • +5  Red Lightness

To save the modifications as a user style, Capture One has online documentation for creating the style. Note that creating styles is only available for the Pro versions of Capture One.

The style I created is a tad brighter and a little pinker. Also noticeable in the comparison is lens correction is performed on the JPG. It's not perfect, but it's close enough for me.

Parting Thoughts

I'm pleased that this workflow works for me. Of course I would prefer if Capture One had official support for the GFX 50S RAF files, lens corrections, and film simulations, but this will do.

Color profiles are still a tricky thing to get right and I'll continue to experiment more with ICC profiles under different lighting conditions. At the very least any odd colorations can be corrected in Capture One by adjusting white balance or curves.

Now that it's all settled, I can focus more on shooting and less on experimenting. Thanks for reading along!

Capture One and the Fujifilm GFX 50S (Part 2)

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In my last post, I came to conclusion that any Capture One workflow that converts the raw files into TIFF for import isn't a viable option. Not only are the TIFF files significantly larger in size than the compressed raws, they are also far less malleable in post processing to the point of being unusable. In addition, Capture One's latest version of 10.1 still does not include Fujifilm GFX 50S support despite adding support for compressed RAF and PSD files. So much for that.

With the likelihood of official Capture One support practically zero at this point, I wanted to continue exploring alternate workflows for the GFX and Capture One. In particular, I explored the DNG conversion workflow in more depth.

Capture One Workflow Using DNG

Converting the RAF into a DNG can be accomplished via various programs, such as Irident X-Transformer or Adobe Lightroom. In my informal testing, I couldn't discern any difference in the outputted DNG files between X-Transformer and Lightroom (or more appropriately Camera Raw).

Since I am already paying for Lightroom and Photoshop CC via the Creative Cloud Photography Plan, I decided to go with Adobe for the raw conversion. However, rather than going through Lightroom, Photoshop, or Bridge, I am using Adobe DNG Converter. It functions pretty much the same as Irident X-Transformer in that it is a stand alone application dedicated to converting raws into DNG files.

DNG-Converter-settings.png

In addition to the DNG Converter, EXIFTool is also needed to change the Make field of the EXIF from Fujifilm to Fujifilm_. This is to circumvent Capture One 10's software block on importing Fujifilm GFX 50S tagged files. EXIFTool can be found here with installation instructions here.

The workflow using Adobe DNG Converter is:

  1. Select the input folder containing the compressed RAF files

  2. Change preferences if desired (you'll only need to do this once)

  3. Hit the Convert button

  4. In Terminal, navigate to the output folder and run the command: exiftool -Make=”FUJIFILM_” *.dng

  5. Import the modified DNG files into Capture One

The generated DNG files are approximately the same size as the original compressed RAF files which is very good. DNG conversion takes about 2.5 seconds per file which is acceptable. The only issue is the color. A comment by EBA made in my previous post really clued me in on where to focus my attention next: color correction.

Color: Dull

Average File Size: 52 MB

Average Time to Convert RAF to DNG: 2.5 seconds / photo

Color Correction in Capture One

One of the obvious problems with importing the GFX 50S DNG files is that they do not have the correct color profile, resulting dark and dull images. Rather than just use one of the existing color profiles, I decided to make a proper color profile for the GFX.

In my search for software to create ICC profiles, I came across DCamProf which is an open source color profiling tool. The tool itself is extremely powerful (and consequently extremely complex), but fortunately there was a section just for Capture One ICC profiles. Needless to say I followed the guide verbatim.

For my reference image, I did the following:

  • X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Photo mounted to a tripod

  • Shot the ColorChecker on a sunny patio at noon with clear skies

  • GFX 50S and 120mm f/4 macro lens at f/16, 1/250s, ISO 400

  • White balance set to 5000K

  • Color space set to Adobe RGB

  • I used a slightly different spline for the LUT curve and modified the Neutral+ look to use ProPhoto RGB color space to avoid color space compression.

This is the resulting GFX 50S ICC profile can be found on my GitHub project CaptureOneICCProfiles.

The profile was generated to be neutral and hopefully as close to real life as possible. I have noticed that it's not quite perfect, but it's close enough that a bit of editing couldn't solve. To my eye the magenta range is a bit more saturated than it should be, but I haven't figured out how to tweak that in the ICC profile yet.

Installing the ICC Profile

To install the ICC profile, copy it to the appropriate location depending on your OS.

MacOS 

/Users/<username>/Library/Colorsync/Profiles

Windows 

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\CaptureOne\Color Profiles

After copying over the ICC profile, Capture One will need to be restarted. Once Capture One is loaded, the new GFX 50S profile can be found in the Other section of the ICC Profile dropdown box. You may have to click on the Show All option first to see it.

ICC-profile-selection.png

Examples

Here are some before and after examples of the GFX 50S ICC profile at work. For the images below, the only difference is using the GFX 50S ICC profile over the default DNG File Neutral profile.

Parting Thoughts

Using a custom ICC profile for the DNG files turned out a lot better than I expected! I still think that some colors could use some desaturation, specifically the skin tones, but at least that is easy to correct while editing. At this point I'm debating whether I should continue to refine the ICC profile or to create a couple of Capture One user styles that will automatically apply the corrections that I want. I'm leaning towards the latter since that I more straightforward.

I think that this workflow is something that I can live with.

I can continue to use Capture One with only a minor penalty to file size and initial import time. The biggest downside to this approach is the slight mangling of the DNG's EXIF data to get it into Capture One. Not a huge deal, but may make any EXIF-based searching or cataloging a pain.

So far I've only run one photo shoot through this workflow. We'll see how I feel about it after another 10. For now this is good enough.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful!