Robin Wong G9 Review - Thoughts?

TheMixMan wrote:

• "There is no easy way of saying this, but I dislike the color profile of the G9. The default JPEG color and the white balance engine don’t work for me. I find the reds unnatural with strong hints of magenta and the green channel is off as well. Skin tones don’t look close to real life and the overall balance is not pleasing. Perhaps the problem is not with the camera, but my own preference." - This is also very weird as ALL other reviews claims this camera has finally great JPGs. Any ideas?
• "The default JPEG engine does a poor job at managing the high ISO noise and details balance. There are noticeable traces of over-sharpening and artificial blurring of details at ISO3200 and higher. I also observed random, stray color fringes in shadow areas that look ugly. I tried various noise reduction settings in camera and they all produced undesirable results. In summary, at high ISO, shoot RAW."
  This is also not inline with a lot of other reviews. In fact I read claims by other reviewers they were unable to replicate the excellent noise reduction of Panasonic with LR.

Happy to hear thoughts of G9 owners here...

As a JPEG shooter, I was disappointed to read this, but then got a bit confused when I looked at his example:

From Robin: "ISO6400, RAW processed (left) vs SOOC JPEG (right). Pay attention to the yellow color patches on the eye-brows on the JPEG image."

I find the SOOC JPEG superior - the processed RAW appears much noisier with smeared details(microphone grill, necklace, earring). The JPEG skin and skin tone look more pleasing to me as well. Arguably too smooth but the result achieves better transitions/gradations).

I always enjoy Robin's reviews, and am blown away by his photos. As with most things, I guess this JPEG color/NR/detail issue comes down to subjective preference - or I'm just WEIRD Still planning on slowly embezzling from the kids' college fund to buy my G9! Don't tell my wife!

I agree with you, I wonder if his monitor calibration was off?

I cycled through some of my calibration standards on my Eizo monitor and in all of them the RH image looked better and I couldn't see those yellow colour patches.

Should get my G9 tomorrow so will be able to see for myself