Thanks all for your thoughts.
Originally posted by kadajawi Hard to tell though if Vimeo made it look bad (in terms of compression), or if that came out of camera like that.
You can download the original via Vimeo if you would like a closer look (exported at 20-30mbps in h.264), and yes there's a some loss especially as Vimeo downscales playback to 720p. It looks quite similar though.
Originally posted by kadajawi I think if you're serious about video
...use a serious video camera ;-) . I use the FS700, XF305 and C300 in my day job, but they're prohibitively expensive to rent for the sideline projects I do. (Nearly) everyone in my area uses Canon, so borrowing/hiring locally is almost all Canon and usually 600D, 7D or 5D mkII or mkIII and EOS lenses. Also, my FA and pre-FA Pentax lenses work with Canon cameras via an adapter, whereas they don't with Nikon and would crop too much on Panasonic. Canon's not perfect (by a long way) but they have near total penetration where I am at the amateur/low budget end (in Edinburgh). I appreciate this will be different for others in different circumstances, but the disadvantages of buying into a different system outweigh the advantages for me.
In any case, the k-3 will have its place in a way my k-5 did not due to it's lack of manual video control. For example tomorrow I will use it for a few b-roll documentary macro shots alongside 720p HDV interview footage, v handy to be able to use my k-3 for things like this and it doesn't have to match the look too closely as the shot type is so different.
Originally posted by PiDicus Rex Give the 'Muted' image profile a go, you should find it's performance, especially where the whites and blacks in the image are close to being clipped at the limits of the CoDec or sensor.
I've found the latitude is so poor that I'm better off getting it right in camera, as it can't have much done to it in post without looking terrible v quickly. This is riskier, and in some cases I wouldn't want to burn in a look in camera, but where the shooting situation is controllable I prefer to get the look as close as possible to what I want in camera. If I was using a camera with much greater latitude or raw video I would shoot a more flat profile as I do with stills.