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Capture One to support Hasselblad.

Jerome Marot

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Capture One was written by Phase One and they decided that their software will not support Hasselblad, their direct competitors at the time. This is officially over:


On a related note, the owner of Capture and Phase One, the investment company Axcel, split the two and is looking for a buyer:

petapixel.com

Capture One's Private Equity Owner Is Trying to Sell It: Report

It appears Capture One is being auctioned.
petapixel.com petapixel.com

Capture One started in 2002. Hasselblad bought Imacon in 2004, effectively becoming a direct competitor to Phase one:
Then around 2007, Hasselblad issued the H3DII cameras, which would only work with their own digital backs and issued their own software, Phocus:

Conversely, Phase One partnered with Mamiya so as to have a camera body for their digital backs. They eventually bought Mamiya in 2015.
 
Jerome Marot

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Maybe a quick reminder on what happened at the time is needed.

At the turn of the century, analog medium format was still the medium used by studio photographers, the ones paid to take picture for catalogues. Some worked with models (and appreciated the central shutter of medium format cameras), some just photographed items. But for them, 24x36 was an inferior medium and digital cameras were not there yet. Hasselblad issued the H1 camera in 2002. Phase One had scan backs at the time.

Fast forward to around 2004, and digital backs started to replace film backs on MF cameras. Being able to shoot tethered was a real plus, as the pictures were to be transferred to a computer anyway. This is the market Phase One and Hasselblad competed for.

Fast forward again to 2007-2008. Digital backs reach 50 megapixels. The first affordable "full frame" (24x36) digital cameras reach the market (Canon EOS 5D, Nikon D700 and Sony A-900), but they don't support tethering. Studio photographers keep their MF cameras, but see no need to upgrade as 50 megapixels are not needed. Pictures are only printed so big in catalogues.

With their customers not replacing their cameras, MF manufacturers can't survive. Phase One finds a new market with Museums digitizing their collections, Hasselblad tries the luxury market with the Lunar and Stellar rebadged Sony cameras. That fails, the cameras were incredibly ugly. They get a new CEO (Perry Oosting) who has some ideas about design and they issue the X1D in 2016.

Eventually, the two companies were acquired by private equity firms (Ventizz for Hasselblad in 2011, Silverfleet for Phase One in 2014, the Axcel in 2019). Hasselblad was bought by DJI between 2015 and 2017.

I think that studio photographers use digital 24x36 nowadays. Tethering options are available. DJI/Hasselblad sells the X2D2 to rich amateurs, just as Leica does with their offerings. Phase One is still active in the aerial photography and machine vision business.
 
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