I think all of the fancy features were turned off in DPP except peripheral illumination. I will see if disabling that helps - it ought to as it has the effect of pushing the corners.
All this nonsense about underexposure misses the point entirely. I exposed the shot how I wanted it to look. I don't want white in the sky. The kindly provided histogram shows that the shadows are not clipped. The exposure is perfect. Could I reduce noise by overexposing and then pulling in DPP? Sure, but I did not buy the camera to do that to every shot. Most shots have higher contrast than this scene, and it would not be possible to expose further right without sacrificing highlights. I should not have to beware of putting data in the left quarter of the histogram at 200 ISO. Regardless of this red herring, I have been using a 1Ds3 for a year, and I don't think handling of shadows is the same.
Tonal problems also emerge in large graduated areas. 5D2 ouput has the appearance you would expect if the camera had a bandwidth bottleneck somewhere in its processing, which leads to posterisation in the shadow noise, and in graduated tones. People are calling that banding, but it seems to me that it is posterisation which is exacerbating shadow noise and spoiling continuous grades. These are not the 14 bit files that I grew used to in the 1Ds3. A simple solution will be to add very fine noise, so that the flat tonal blocks will to some extent become less visible, but it is a shame that we have to use noise to mask a camera shortcoming.
Good morning Andi!