WOW, a post with my name on it ... wow, now my head is too big to reply.
I found the 50D is indeed different than the other xxD that I have had and as you and Noel have observed, they all have been pretty similar up to now. As I posted a week ago, my 50D is 3rd camera and I still prefer to take the 40's over the 50 for normal T&I or school work. The exception is family ports/weddings and the extra file size is nice for those but just overkill for the rest of our work.
Anyway, just today I turned the saturation down to 2 steps below normal and it has been 1 stop below for the past month. As per Roger Martin's and my discussion recently, my view is that Nikon is way under and the 50D is way over in saturation. Part in my observation in the last week of shooting is that I've come across a lot of very tanned people and one notch under saturation is still a bit much on them. Now the dead/white people are going to be real tough to deal with!!! Anyway, I have not had anything that looked at all muddy. I did have contrast up one notch but we've had weeks on end of overcast/rainy/crappy weather that needed a bit of snap to get the photos to norm.
Whenever I get a camera I always take a few hours to test it against previous and to get to our norm. It then gets fine tweaked on the color adjust in preferences. The 50D was tougher but is was real close in the end.
So Will, I can't say that I've had the muddy problem you are seeing, but then, almost everything I shoot is set at 5300K. I do way too many crazy uniform colors to allow an AWB - fluorescent green is my fav.
I guess I can verify everything when I get a 'normal' face and uniform (not much of those these days), a jpg out of the camera is absolutely 'dead-nuts' on the money for a straight print.
Sorry, I wish I could be more help. I will give it some more thought Will and chime in if anything clicks inside my now oversized head.
One last thought: I'd love to get together with 3 or 4 others and shoot a series of different faces with different cameras and just see what gives a better image out of the camera. I sure think that would spin a few heads.
I suspect that the 50D does a lot more 'in camera' processing of jpgs than previous models. This is just my assumption as per thoughts in a post with Andrew Rodney. FWIW if I have a bright orange uniform, the center of the face is measurably more orange than it should be. Ya, I know, it's all in the eye & the head - but the test is (like the old film days) print one kid with a grey uniform, one with a green uniform and one with bright orange, print
identically, then cut out the center of their face where reflections and spill are impossible and viola!!! it's there. I'm baffled and this is something that I have not encountered in many years and the shooting has not changed, just cameras.
Anyway, the rambling thoughts of an old, tired man.
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