Capture One with Etcetera profiles for Digital Rebel

[wintoid]

I'm trying to decide whether to splash out further on the Etcetera profile for my 300d. Hope noone minds taking part in a little poll...

[wintoid]

No comments at all? That's got to be a first for THIS forum! Surely I win a prize :D

[wintoid]

Well I went and bought the Etcetera profile for the 300d, and I think it's better, so I guess I'll vote in my own poll in case it helps anyone else :D

[Scottes]

Please post some examples. I've always been curious.

At the very least describe "better" - more accurate?

[wintoid]

I don't know about "more accurate". That sort of implies that there is one perfect way for a photo to be. Maybe there is, but it's not my personal philosophy :D

My Phase One software comes with 2 profiles, the regular one, and the "sunset" profile which is intended for when a bug in C1 affects the colour of the greens :(

The Etcetera profiles come as a pair, one is losat (intended for portraits and so on), and the other is hisat (intended more for landscapes). Supposedly, both the Etcetera profiles have been adjusted to minimise the problem with greens.

The best impression I can give is that both the Etcetera profiles seem more punchy than the Phase One ones, but especially the hisat. I don't really shoot landscapes, but take a lot of portraits of my 10-month old daughter, and I find myself using the hisat the most, even though that's not its supposed use.

Sorry punchy is the best word I can think of right now. It's about contrast and colour vibrancy I guess. I'll try to make some examples if I get time.

[wintoid]

Not sure how much of an idea this will give you. These are 25% of the full resolution. When I mess with these inside C1, I can see that there's more shadow detail around the creases of her eyes, for example.

C1 generic profile (http://simon.pietroni.co.uk/P1_generic.jpg)

Etcetera hisat profile (http://simon.pietroni.co.uk/Etc_hisat.jpg)

Etcetera losat profile (http://simon.pietroni.co.uk/Etc_losat.jpg)

Edited to change the embedded images to links

[wintoid]

Hmm on the web, they definitely don't look as different as they do inside C1. Perhaps because I exported to sRGB to show them here?

[Scottes]

I was wondering why I couldn't tell any difference between them, then I saw the last post about sRGB.

I'd guess that I wouldn't see the reason to spend the extra $30 for a bit more saturation and shadow detail since those things are so easily corrected in PS. It made more sense given the old problematic yellow & green PhaseOne profiles, but I've been pretty happy lately with PhaseOne.

[who10]

Simon... Does this help demonstrate your observations?

link: http://www.haskellct.com/photos/P1_Etc_Compare.jpg

David

[wintoid]

Wow thanks David, it does help a bit, but it still looks like an awfully subtle difference. When I'm flicking between the profiles in C1 it's very obvious that the image looks different.

I think I may have picked a bad example. When I get time I'm going to find a better one, and test it in Adobe RGB as well as sRGB, and then I'll post that.

[who10]

When I'm flicking between the profiles in C1 it's very obvious that the image looks different.

I think I may have picked a bad example. When I get time I'm going to find a better one, and test it in Adobe RGB as well as sRGB, and then I'll post that.

Here's a suggestion... leave the image in AdobeRGB (it will look flat in your browser - that's okay), create a montage with each image variant in one quadrant, ensure the ICC profile is embedded - post a link to this pic and instruct us to view the image on our preferred ICC savvy app (Photoshop, Elements, etc)... that way we'll see exactly what you're seeing (see Scottes comment about sRGB with Explorer).

Hope that helps. :D

[slejhamer]

Wintoid, you should also compare these to the C1 "sunset" profile.

Also keep in mind that the 300D and 10D "V2" etcetera profiles that are optimized for C1 v3.5 are still in development.