Ripple Grading Panel

One of the new features in Phase One's latest version of Capture One, version 10, is the facility to work with control surfaces from Tangent. As a prolific photographer, and having recently upgraded to C1 V10 I decided to give Tangent's entry level control surface, the Ripple, a whirl. This review of the Ripple is with respect to ONLY Capture One.As you can see, it features three trackballs, three dials, and 8 buttons. There are two main buttons, one between each pair of trackballs, and pairs of secondary buttons, situated either side of each dial. For a start, it's a lovely bit of equipment, about 13 inches wide, and the trackballs are big, over an inch in diameter, and satisfyingly heavy and smooth to turn. The dials turn infinitely, and the buttons depress with a satisfying clack.C1 recognises the Ripple instantly, and there are various default mappings, but using the Ripple mapping software you can assign just about any editing activity to the controls. Each control, be it dial or ball, can have two functions, main and alternate. Pressing and holding the left main button gives the alternate function of each control. But let's get one negative out of the way right now - the pairs of buttons each side of the dials are NOT programmable; one of each pair does nothing, while the other one simply resets whatever value has been set with its associated dial to out-of-camera default. It's likely that these buttons have more functions with other software, don't know.The Ripple is not going to replace your mouse entirely, but you can set it up to handle what you think are your most-used adjustments. I've set mine up as follows:Dials, from the left: exposure / Kelvin / clarityDials, alternate functiona: highlights / shadows / sharpeningThe three trackballs are as per defaults, and match the 3-way colour wheels under Color Balance, with the main function of each ball moving the little central marker in each wheel - very logical. The alternate function of each ball adjusts the lightness level of each colour wheel, ie, the vertical indicator to the right of each colour wheel.If you forget which wheel controls your Clarity, no problem. Just touch any of the 6 main controls and a small HUD pops up on your screen showing labels associated with each control. The HUD disappears after 3 seconds of no Ripple use.Finally, the left main button provides the alternate functions, and I've programmed the right-hand main button to Process.In use, of course it's going to take some getting used to, but in no time you'll be turning and tracking like mad. It's great fun to use, but you'll be going back to the mapping software quite a bit initially. One thing you'll fiddle with is that each dial can be adjusted for sensitivity so, eg, a one-stop change in exposure can be set to need a half turn or several full turns.

Very useful !! Try it with command post (free Mac app) and you can control FCPX directly! .. excellent!!

Speeded up my DaVinci Resolve workflow on a budget. Perfect

Great product