At Photokina Fujifilm and Phase One announced that the Capture One suite would support the Fujifilm GFX system as the only medium format system outside of Phase One’s own line of medium format cameras.
I have always thought that the tethering options within Capture One was one of the best solutions available, and now finally having that with my GFX cameras is amazing.
I’m primarily a street- and natural light portrait photographer, so I rarely find myself in a studio setting that requires a tethering solution. But I have started using it more and more for the camera product shots that I shoot for FUJIFILM. The most amazing thing about tethering is the obvious fact that you get to view your images on the big laptop screen right away, instead of finishing a shoot using the EVF/LCD only to find out that the images are not sharp, or the lighting is off, or that you have color inconsistencies between your images. With tethering you’re way ahead of the game from the moment you press your shutter.
Tethering has been available to other software suites with the GFX using different plugins etc. But the solutions have so far not been as fluent and perfect as I think they should be. With Capture One native support all this is changed.
The first time you plug in your camera, you will see just how easy it is.
- Go into the Connection Settings menu on your FUJIFILM camera. Set “PC CONNECTION MODE” to “USB AUTO”
- Turn off the camera and plug in your cable to both camera and computer
- With Capture One already launched, turn on the camera
And thats actually it. You’re now up and running in tethered mode. With it you have to possibility to shoot on the camera, but also remotely triggering the camera using the software itself.
When I shoot my product shots for FUJIFILM I always capture both RAW and JPEG. Most of the time I actually work straight off the jpeg, since I can get a very balanced look straight out of the camera. And let’s be honest here. Time is money and you can save a lot of time when you cut down on post processing. I use the PRO Neg. Hi or PRO Neg. Std for the product shots.
The new Capture One 12 now have built-in Film Simulation support, so if you want to use RAW and still get the look from the Film Simulations, you can now do so.
- Go to Base Characteristics tool
- You can now apply the Film Simulations as a curve.
The Capture One team spent a great amount of time perfecting the Film Simulations and make them exactly like those applied in-camera to the JPEGs. They look amazing. The special color science that FUJIFILM put into their Film Simulations have definitely been preserved in the Capture One renditions.
One of the very powerful things I like about Capture One is that you can apply all the image tweaking functions of the software on a masked per-brush basis. It’s a layered build-up like you find in e.g. Photoshop. This gives complete control of every aspect of the image.
The image itself is loaded as “Background”, where you can apply all the adjustments you want to the whole image. When you want to apply a local adjustment it really couldn’t be easier.
- Go to your Layers Tool.
- Choose the type of tool you want to be the base of your layer (Brush, Radial Grad, Linear Grad or Erase)
- Press the “+” icon to add the layer.
- Draw your mask
With the Layer marked, all the settings you now choose to tweak will be applied only to the selected layer/mask that you drew.
As a further enhancement in Capture One 12 you can now press the “Luma Range…” button under the Layers tool where you can bind your mask to certain luminosity values. A very powerful tool especially for skin retouching and eye-work.
Capture One 12 holds many many more functions than the 3 key functions that I have outlined here. The above guide is a very basic guide on how to get going with the very powerful tools within Capture One. With full Fujifilm support, it is in my opinion the very best post-processing software on the market right now.
