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I'm aware Panasonic's implementation on their lumix lenses being weird, but is this a thing for other systems as well? I've never seen someone complain about IS on a Canon lens or ENG camera, unless the system was broken (did have a DVX100 go nuts on me once because the OIS system was actually damaged and it wouldn't stop bouncing unless I turned the feature off. Go figure, also Panasonic, but I'd chalk that to coincidence).

Interesting, I guess it depends on what "profession" they are in. Most folks in the industry I've spoken with have the complete opposite opinion, but to be fair, most of them work events, nightclubs, weddings, etc. where having IS is worth their weight in gold. Even when rolling with an ENG cam on a balanced shoulder rig using gear from the TV studio they work for, that OIS switch is ON for critical work. Heck, Andrew Reid himself has sung the praises of having IBIS in your camera of choice- its a wonderful tool that those of us who don't have wish we did! I know the big pro cinema primes used on Hollywood sets are fully manual and don't have IS, but I always assumed it was because they don't need features like that (big rigs on dollys, tracks, cranes, etc- not really in danger of camera shake) but not because it was somehow detrimental. That's news to me. I'd think everyone I know shooting in smaller crews on a budget, with small DSLR/mirrorless cameras and using lenses designed for photography, Image Stabilization would be very handy. Can you elaborate as to what the down side would be? What unpredictable behavior are you referring to (aside from a lens that is not working properly, like when the 35-100 lumix lens used to "jump" due to a firmware issue)? And what motion artifacts are introduced by one? This is all honestly very much news to me!

Ok, so the A7sii and A7Rii have been out for long enough that someone here must have tried it, right? Can anyone please confirm whether or not you can keep skin smoothing off while using only the hdmi out to record? I'm also going to be interested in seeing whether or not the upcoming A6300 has it. Since the A7S was addressed, I'd like to assume they won't have this bug going forward, but I'd really love to get some confirmation. All I have is an A7s and an A5100 and A6000 at the moment.

So, a6100 coming soon according to Sony rumor sites. I'm really hoping this doesn't mean they're giving up on supporting their current crop of cameras. Very disappointed in Sony's lack of response on this issue so far.

Jacob- did your A7sii and Shogun arrive? I'm pretty sure the bug won't appear since they fixed it in the A7s i already, but I would love to hear some confirmation that Sony isn't up to their old tricks still. I'm still upset that none of their APS-C cameras are fixed. I wanted a little B-cam to my A7s for multicam setups, but if I have to wait for the next generation of cameras I'll be pretty peeved.

I have not confirmed anything on the Sii, but I'd guess if they fixed it on the A7S, the 2 should have it shipped without the bug in the current firmware. Still, feel free to click the link above to join the Sony community and click "me too" to make sure they know how you feel about this bug's existence.

Does anyone know specifically what happens to the camera's settings in Clear Image Zoom? I see some icons on the screen change (metering and focus modes seem to change, can't tell what else), so I'm wondering if the skin smoothing bug disappearing is a side effect of something else that happens. If so, maybe it can be replicated without adding additional crop to the view?

Quick update: May have found a viable workaround for now. Apparently skin smoothing stays off when using clear image zoom. So I set it to the bare minimum (1.1x) and everything looks normal. Only problem is this adds to the APSC crop slightly. Since Sonys are 1.5x in APSC, using clear image zoom makes it a 1.65x. Considering a Canon crop camera is really a 1.6x, this isn't too bad. It stinks because it shouldn't be. But,it might be something. I'm going to do some testing, was just really excited about it so I wanted to share here first.

Chris, did you ever double check? I would LOVE to hear about someone who was immune, at least until Sony decides to chime in. I'm guessing since you didn't respond that it did, in fact, happen. :/

No, you have to understand that what I'm talking about is a bug, and what you are talking about is using the camera in a different way than it was designed. I don't think the photography modes were ever intended to give a clean recorder-ready output from the hdmi. NONE of their other cameras do this. They are feeding a quick-and-dirty sample of the sensor for preview purposes. There is no audio, and it isn't using the binning/scaling/whatever resample they use to get smooth-ish looking frames unless you hit the record button. The regular hdmi out during those modes are simply not intended for video- that's why they have a video mode! The video mode resamples the way video frames should be sampled, outputs the sound over the hdmi, and generally acts the way they would think a video user expects it to act. The only problem with that mode, is this bug. And I think it has to do with the fact that they greyed out skin smoothing in the menu, so the software is accidentally not respecting the toggle (whereas in other modes it is). It sounds more to me like you are requesting that they add aspect ratio options to movie mode. It would be a whole lot more reasonable to ask for that than to ask them to treat all photography modes like video modes while idling in HDMI. Also, adding a new feature is a lot more time consuming than fixing a bug. I'll bet this is something as simple as a single line of code somewhere that needs to be tweaked. ...thank you for participating in the thread over there, btw. Every post counts! Did you click "me too"?

Yep. Has nothing to do with AF. So, setting face detection to "off" seems to get around it for people who intend to record internally- but only if you press record. If the camera doesn't think it is seeing a face, there's nothing to apply smoothing to. The problem is, this "workaround" only applies as soon as you hit the record button. When it isn't actively capturing, that face detection and skin smoothing come back in the live view. That means if you are feeding a live HDMI signal out to an external recorder or to a monitor or internet streamer, the faces will be all waxy. Pressing record will help for only 30 min increments, since the internal recording stops. Or, in the case of the A5100, it will overheat before even that. The biggest reason this bug irks me is that these little cameras are actually excellent for sending APS-C live hdmi out for hours on a single battery. If you aren't recording internally, the A5100 not only never overheats, but also can feed an Atomos Ninja for over well an hour with battery left to spare. With Ninja's being under $300 these days, this is a great B-cam to shoot events and concerts alongside something like an A7s. But this bug makes external recording or streaming nearly pointless. Pressing record every 30 minutes isn't practical if the purpose is just to get a clean signal, and will run down the battery and heat up faster for no good reason. Not to mention the unnecessary wear and tear on a memory card doing write cycles when we don't need to. Something interesting that just occurred to me- We mentioned above that the bug only exists in video mode. Not on M or any other photography mode. Unfortunately, the only way to get a properly resampled clean HDMI video signal is by being in video mode. But interestingly, when in video mode, skin smoothing is greyed out in the menu. You can't toggle it on or off, as I think it was supposed to always be off. This bug, however, makes it default to ON even though the menu is greyed out and says "disabled" in video mode. I'm wondering, maybe the reason it doesn't do it in photo modes is because you have the ability to toggle it off? Maybe if Sony actually let us turn it on and off in video mode, the camera would respect our choice to turn it off? I don't know if I'm on to something. Hopefully someone at Sony can figure it out and give us a firmware update!

ROFL! Do it like this guy in his example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6GVm1Ke2dQ Make sure the camera can see the edges of your face- if you are too close up, it won't recognize a face. I think it needs to see forhead, eyes, nose and chin. If I wear sunglasses or a sunviser, it is less likely to happen. Make sure you are on movie mode, and make sure you are not recording internally. To see the difference, cover one eye and it will turn off, then watch your forehead as you uncover your eye and wait about 3-5 seconds. It does it to me everytime, without fail. I think I forgot to mention this here, but Sony has a community site with a forum that also takes suggestions. This site is read by Sony employees and problems are often forwarded to engineers there. I see the RX100 used to have skin smoothing in video mode, and was mentioned on the forum there. Looks like a firmware update came out shortly after the discussion that fixed it. So, maybe if enough of us go over there and post someting, or at least just click "me too", they'll take notice? Andrew, I hope its OK if I post a link to an external site, considering the situation: http://community.sony.com/t5/Join-the-Inspiration/Please-let-us-disable-skin-smoothing-so-it-doesn-t-show-up-in/idi-p/538535

Are you recording in the camera? Is there a face being recognized? The A7rii hopefully was shipped without the bug, since it seems they fixed the A7s already. The A5100 definitely does still have it.

I use an Atomos Ninja 2. I think the output is standardized to be 60hz but there is a pulldown applied that the recorder seems to know how to deal with. Recorder and camera were set to 1080/24p, and the footage when viewed on my desktop in post accurately shows 23.97fps (and looks great). I don't think the camera or recorder supports 60p over HDMI. 24 and 30 seem to work fine (NTSC user).

Another interesting update on this topic: Someone on another forum mentioned that the bug doesn't happen on his a6000 when the camera is set to "M" instead of movie mode. I tried it out with my A5100, and sure enough, it does not smooth my skin. HOWEVER, the output quality on anything other than movie mode stinks! First of all, it doesn't output audio over HDMI in any other mode, and the aspect ratio is wrong (3:2). But even if I run my own mic into an Atomos and manually set the aspect to 16:9 in M, the picture quality is terrible! It looks like a very low quality re-sample of the sensor, insane amounts of moire and aliasing. Eyebrows have rainbow patterns everywhere, and mostly straight smooth lines become jaggedly sharp edged. Not useful output AT ALL. But it *is* interesting to see that the bug only exists in movie mode. Flip the mode over to movie, the image cleans up and sensor resamples really nicely... but, then the skin thing starts up again within a few seconds. Trying to find a way to use this information to my advantage, but can't seem to make odds or ends of it. All I can say is, this is such an obvious bug I can't believe Sony has ignored it so long.