I've owned my XH A1 for several months now and have loved tweaking with the custom settings. I've still had a few problems understanding some of them so I thought I would post some pictures that helped me.

The first thing was Coring. Canon explains this as "For adjusting the subtle noise components on the screen. When the cursor is moved in the + direction, the noise becomes less noticeable. When the cursor is moved in the - direction, it becomes more noticeable."

I took 3 still pictures of my office bookshelf and then zoomed in on some high-contrast areas. These stills are blown up 200% to see the results.

Pictures were taken with settings 1/48, 1.8, 0db gain with the following presets:

GAMMA : NORMAL
KNEE : HIGH
BLACK : STRETCH
MASTER PED. : 0
SETUP LEVEL : -9
SHARPNESS : 0
H DTL FREQ : MIDDLE
DTL HV BAL : 0
CORING : -9, 0, or +9
NR : OFF
NR2 : OFF
COLOR MAT. : NORMAL
COLOR GAIN : 0
COLOR PHASE : 0
R GAIN : 0
G GAIN : 0
B GAIN : 0
RG MATRIX : 0
RB MATRIX : 0
GR MATRIX : 0
GB MATRIX : 0
BR MATRIX : 0
BG MATRIX : 0

If you open the files and look at them side-by-side, it is easy to tell what the "subtle noise" is that Canon talks about.

Hope this helps some. I'll try and do some other tests soon.

Coring is a blessing. Now I use it at +9 and may add sharpness at will without problems!

That was very helpful- thanks!

Paul, thanks for the informative post. When I looked at the images, I noticed that the contents of your bookshelf look pretty similar to mine. Then I checked your profile and saw that you are in the same field. Looks like we have the makings of a niche affinity group - pediatricians who shoot with the XH A1. :)

Bill

How does this affect actual detail? I tried it with my Letus, always looking to cut down on noise, and it looked like a watercolor picture. Or is it just my paranoid eyes zooming in on the picture too much?

It can make your video look like a water color painting. I experimented with fine tuning coring settings until I got to a point where I was happy with both the details and the reduction in fine scale noise. The compromise setting will probably vary from one preset to another and from one user to another.

Pat