@jhero Youre totally correct. I do all my testing on Standard profile as of Canis. Hey, and none of those pictures I put up were graded yet. Theyre looking exceptional under devinci and in fcpx

I couldn't agree more. Those kids brought a big smile to my groggy early morning face. Thanks ishvar for posting. Great stuff!

And still, just as with every other single patch I've tested, horrible blocky splotching in low IRE skintones. It's readily apparent in the first picture posted on the bottom of page 3. Look at the right side of his face, A bit over middle gray exposure wise, perfectly fine. The let side of his face, low IRE, let the fun begin. There's more or less just 3 giant blurry gobs of color there. I love this camera, but maybe I've been spoiled by my ex1 for years. I have never, ever had this issue with it, and I have shot probably in the hundreds of underexposed skin. An that was mpeg-2 35mb/s. Really wish someone would address this and stop blaming it on 8-bit space. (protip - it has nothing to do with bit depth. It is not banding on a smooth noiseless luma gradient. All those beautiful, smooth, barely lit skintones you see on your favorite bluray or dvd? Those are in 8-bit space, and at a much lower bitrate than these patches)

What the eff is going on here! It is so annoying! I've been using my ex1 to shoot pick up shots when I know a subjects face is going to be in low light. Less than Ideal

here's a cap from sedna aq1 - literally the ugliest skintone compression I've ever seen - http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/8484/tfff.png

Yes, a financial difference. I wasn't aware the amount of digits in a financial indicator had anything to do with compression coefficients, but I might be wrong!

and btw is stock any better on the gh2? and if you know a thing or two on the subject of compression coefficients why not get a better setting here...vitaly has made it possible for anybody with knowledge and time to make it better...

@Fohdeesha Are you talking about comparing the Sony EX1 professional camcorder that retailed for nearly $8,000 US to the $700 US GH2 camera?

@Fohdeesha is quite correct yet your 'and still' announcement disregards attempts in trying to improve things. Its fiddly exposing skintones correctly on the GH2. Achieving around 50% to 70% (variable skin colour) IRE scale is easier on my EX3 and other dedicated video cams/decent monitors with zebras. The light on the subject matter and surroundings can also change in whatever conditions so you have to adjust. This in turn makes it harder to test settings on a gh2. Its not perfect but its getting better. The picture profiles on the GH2 have yet to be cracked and so we are left with a fight with the few ptools settings we have to make the best of things. Incidently, the picture you refer to was under the 'standard' profile. Filters can help and there are plenty of topics on the case. Indeed the EX1/3 is not perfect.

Adjusting red saturation in the matrix is one of the things Im continuing to delve into. This takes many hours/days to test for the few testers doing settings; please by all means suggest chroma and luma frequency adjustments to me at any time - and try and help!

Provide detailed analysis and send identical images where you have had great success with the EX1 in similar conditions with the GH2.

I suggest you test Orion. This is using the official Panasonic AVC Intra matrix. Now you will realise how difficult it is.

Finally, the picture from Sedna you show us isn't brilliant is it?! Moving vehicle, moving hands, very moving... OIS on the EX is certainly better for this kind of shot. Just realised you 'joined' this site very recently so its about time you changed your name again.

Shot some live music under very challenging light last night using CM Night - looks brilliant! Even ETC mode looks very strong, yes it's grainy, but to me it has a very pleasing look like the grain you see on blu-rays of 60s music docs, like Monterey Pop.

I was mostly using ISO640, but once I had my primary material I think I shot a little more at 1250 and above just to experiment. Again, all looks awesome to my eye and taste at least. Sure it's not clean, but it is definitely organic!

It's for an ongoing music video project so I can't post anything yet but I'm super happy with it so far.

The only downside was that I did have a couple minutes of footage flat-out go missing - and I noticed several times recording stopped without an error, just stopped, at various points in clips. Nowhere near the 4 minute point either. However when the recording stopped in one instance it did seem to have taken my footage with it, sadly. Sandisk Extreme 32gb 30mb/s card.

@Oedipax ETC in low light and a few other conditions is big no go zone for me...stock,patches, whatever, it only works fine in bright daylight .

@Odeipax I think @luxis was referring to the ongoing stability issues he's suffered with ETC. I've been lucky enough not to have them to the same extent, but it sounds rather frustrating.

@driftwood thank you so much!

Canis Majoris 'Night'.