I recently did some test footage with the Panasonic DVX100A. I shot at night around a campfire using two people as the primary subjects. We previewed the images through the camera's viewfinders, and after experimenting with a basic lighting setup, we generated some great, rich footage.

Upon importing the video into Vegas, however, I found that the footage was nothing like the footage we previewed through the viewfinder. Instead of deep, rich colors (as was the case while shooting) we found that the footage, once imported into Vegas, was very drab. The richness and beauty of the image was simply not there...as if it had been completely flattened.

I messed around with a few plug-ins (color correction, a MovieLooks film filter, etc.) and made minor improvements on the image quality...but as of yet I've not been able to even come close to the image I thought I was capturing.

I haven't noticed this with daytime footage - is the problem related to the DVX100A & it's viewfinder (giving inaccurate images), or is there something I should be doing from a PC standpoint to capture the top-quality images that the camera seems to have recorded?

Any helpd would be appreciated.