HASSELBLAD - PHASE ONE TEST

Cameras used:

Phase One P65+ on Phase One (Mamiya 645) body with Mamiya 80mm f/2.8 lens (Dalsa 60MP sensor)

Hasselblad H3DII-50MS with Hasselblad 80mm f/2.8 lens (Kodak 50MP sensor used in single and multishot mode)

Setup:

Below a photo of the test setup. Shots were taken at 1/125s - f/22 (focus on banknotes).
Observations while shooting were that the viewfinder of the Phase One camera shows a very small picture compared to the Hasselblad H3D, it feels like looking through a 35mm camera and it is difficult to focus. Also, autofocus on the Phase is slower and can't be intervened, and the display on the back is tiny.

Phase One photos were processed with Capture One Pro 5.0.1, Hasselblad photos with Phocus 2.0. Grey balance was applied to the neutral grey on the test chart in the photo, all other settings (sharpen, saturation, etc) were on zero or switched off in both programs.

Below are crops from the photo:

1. SHARPNESS

2. NOISE

3. TONES

4. HIGHLIGHTS

5. SHADOWS

6. HIGH ISO (Phase One ISO+)

Conclusion:

Phase One's ISO+ feature is excellent at ISO 800, higher ISO ratings are obsolete. Noise levels in Phase One files are higher than Hasselblad's at low ISO.

Between ISO 50 and ISO 200 Hasselblad files are less noisy. The point where they are about the same is at ISO 400 with ISO+ applied.

Hasselblad has a higher dynamic range with more definition in the highlights and better gradients in the colors.

The Hasselblad lens is a little bit sharper than the Mamiya, but the difference is not very impressive. There is however an impressive difference between the single shot and the multishot files, in color and especially in sharpness. This leads me to the conclusion that the bottleneck in quality in medium format is not yet the lack of lens performance (as in 35mm) but the lack of sensor performance, where the problem is not the number of pixels but the algorythms used in creation of the files (that are not used in Multishot mode).

I know a lot of detail is being lost in the jpeg conversion, so here are the original files (.iiq and .fff). With these you can also verify for yourself the software settings used and do your own adjustments.

Phase One P65+ (57MB)

Hass 50SS (68MB)

Hass 50MS (247MB)