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A2 diagonal noise influenced by CF card

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Yup, we have the common problem.
When have you bought yours?
If I can ask it... :)

I wrote an email to the German KM support center, (I've bought it there)

included pictures of this phenomenon. No answer yet. And what did you do about yours?
 
I don't know whether to be pleased or not. My eyes are not as good as they used to be - in addition to wearing reading glasses I also have lost 25% of my vision due to a stroke but the examples posted here quite obviously have diagonal noise showing.

It makes me realise something that I have long suspected that the opinions of others particularly when they say 'I don't have a problem' must be taken with a pinch of salt.

If it is true that some A2's don't have this problem then I think that it is high time that KM came clean & offered an explanation & a fix.

Keith-C
 
I can certainly see noise in that picture, but I'm not seeing a diagonal pattern. If I look for a diagonal pattern, though, I start to perceive it as being organized in diagonal lines. I just did a comparison test to another noisy image made with my Oly 8080 at ISO 400 and the A2 at ISO 400. They look very similar, and start grouping as a diagonal pattern when I start thinking about it. (Our brains will force an organization on perceptions when we push it that direction.)

I don't disbelieve that you are seeing it, perhaps my screen doesn't show it quite the same way yours does. Right now I'm looking at these images with an Apple PowerBook G3 (FireWire) laptop.

Godfrey
andrbar said:
If that's true (and I don't see why it could be untrue), then that
means that this phenomenon appears only on some monitors ?

Anyway, for me, it is an issue...Even if you don't see diagonal
noise, I guess you can see excessive noise.
At ISO 64, this noise is not normal.
Cheers
André
Godfrey said:
Godfrey
andrbar said:
Hi Boyd, I'm with you. Did you notice that as soon as you talk
about A2's diagonal noise, almost nobody sees it ?
I've posted a message with an example of my A2's noise. Nobody
reacted.
OK, the A2 is great. BUT some cameras are affected by this issue.
That's a fact. Not an elucubration.
Personnaly, I don't find the noise on the picture in my previous
post is "normal".
It's easy, when you've got a good camera, to laugh at those guys,
like you and me, who didn't have this chance.
Can we live with that ? Yes, of course.
Can this problem be solved ? I hope so.
I would like to see here somebody who has sent his A2 for repair,
and has got a noise-free one. That would encourage me to send mine
to KM, and get what would be the best prosumer camera at this
moment.
Anybody ?
Cheers
André
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
andrbar said:
If that's true (and I don't see why it could be untrue), then that
means that this phenomenon appears only on some monitors ?
Click to expand...
No. That is: as long as your monitor is not that fuzzy that you have a hard time reading this text. Please, this is not a monitor issue :-)

You can see the diagonal noise on a print too, that's the point. You can make good prints at 30x40 cm and bigger from these 8 mp files, depending on your criterea for quality. But the diagonal noise spoils them.

Best, Boyd
 
Godfrey said:
I don't disbelieve that you are seeing it, perhaps my screen
doesn't show it quite the same way yours does. Right now I'm
looking at these images with an Apple PowerBook G3 (FireWire)
laptop.
Click to expand...
Ah, sorry I did not mention this before: somehow it does not show up as clearly of TFT's, seen that on my Toshiba 7200 series laptop and my borther's Mac laptop too.

It would not be a problem when I see it on some monitors only, I see it in big prints ...

Boyd
 
I've just finished making four 11x17" color prints from A2 exposures and cannot see any 'diagonal noise' in them. I guess my camera simply does not exhibit this behavior.

Godfrey
boyd2 said:
You can see the diagonal noise on a print too, that's the point.
You can make good prints at 30x40 cm and bigger from these 8 mp
files, depending on your criterea for quality. But the diagonal
noise spoils them.
Click to expand...
 
Csillag Péter said:
Yup, we have the common problem.
When have you bought yours?
Click to expand...
June 2004. I noticed it right away, did go back and tried an other one in the shop: also diagonal noise, a bit less (that could have been the CF card too as I now found out).

Minolta had non in stock, so they 'permitted' me to take it on holidays and exchange it afterwards. Brought it back, still no stock, so mine was send off to Germany.
Csillag Péter said:
I wrote an email to the German KM support center, (I've bought it
there)
included pictures of this phenomenon. No answer yet. And what did
you do about yours?
Click to expand...
Nothing really! The blurp on the form said:

cleaned, checked, updated, problem not reproduced, cause must be outside the camera.

Nothing changed, I reproduced exactly the same problem in the same test setup. It was gone for 2,5 months ...

They got a extensive letter and a CDR with all the examples.

I think they did not even read the letter, only the form. My letter stated clearly marked on top: already updated to firmware 1.12. They just did it agian, did not E-mail me, did not phone, nothing.

My dealer is trying to get a new one.

Boyd
 
I'm very sorry, but I don't see diagonal noise at all. My equipment is OK.

I imported the crop into PS and enlarged it five times. A lot of noise, but no diagonal noise to see.

It took me half a minute with Noise Ninja and Focal Blade to improve the overall quality of this little jpg with 500%.

So what are we talking about? There is no digital imaging without a digital darkroom.

The original crop with "diagonal noise"



Two beautiful people facing a nice A2



--
Looking for excellent 'how-to' articles about Minolta's A2 from various authors?
See http://www.legene.com/a2
 
Very interesting thread, indeed.

As I am convinced everybody here is honest, I must admit that the degree of perception of this diagonal noise depends on the equipment.

I'm an amateur, not a professional at all, and I "work" on a Compaq laptop. I noticed that depending the viewing angle, the diagonal pattern is clearly visible or not.

However, we must take in account that the crop I posted was from an ISO 64 picture. I expected no visible noise at this sensibility, and yet the noise is very present.

Also, the resolution is very poor, while on most of my pictures in "normal" light, it is excellent.

Yes, the post processing allows to get an usable picture, but it can't add resolution, of course, and the picture remains very poor.

What borries me is that I saw a lot of A2 pictures from various guys, on the same laptop, showing any noise, even in the dark parts of the pictures.

That's why I find that MY A2 delivers more noise than expected, when the light is low.

I'll try to print a large part of this noisy picture and let you know if it is visible, if you wish.

Anyway, I think I will send my A2 to KM, not to get another one (it is too late), but to get it tuned, if possible.
I don't wanna replace my A2 with another camera !
Excuse my poor english : I'm french.
Cheers
André
 
Not that it solves your problem, but I tried out the noise reduction feature in the new PSP 9 (I also have Noise Ninja, but haven't tried that as well). I just used the default settings, and this is what it produced:

 
Hi Boyd,

I also belong to those who can not see the diagonal banding of your picture on my screen. :-)

Probably the only way you could show the forum is to make a screenshot and post it here!

Cheers, Feri

'I can look at a fine photograph and sometimes I can hear music. Ansel Adams.'
 
Ferenc MOGOR said:
And then let's think about a solution!? :-O
Click to expand...
The solution is Adobes dedicated A2 RAW converter, if any solution should be needed.

1. André shows a crop that is only 2,1 percent of a full A2 jpg fine image.
2. Sometimes even he himself doesn't see "diagonal noise".

3. I proofed that even 2,1 percent of his (!) A2 image offers a neat image without any noticable noise.

So my advice: go out and take pictures. You're not in the billboard production industry en even when you were, your A2 will do the job, if you forget your notebook to do postprocessing.

--
Looking for excellent 'how-to' articles about Minolta's A2 from various authors?
See http://www.legene.com/a2
 
OK, 2.1% of an image is not very significant. But I did the test : I printed the whole image on my HP, hign quality, HP premium plus glossy paper, in A4 format.

And the noise is visible. It is not "diagonal", but it is here, and it is annoying. The resolution is so-so, too...

Of course, a removing noise software does the job. But I have only Photoshop 7, and there's no functionnality to remove noise, as far as I know, so I must use first a noise-removing software, and then post process the picture in PS : quite boring...
Oh BTW, I tried with RAW : same thing. The noise is absolutely identical...
Cheers
André
pmlegene said:
Ferenc MOGOR said:
And then let's think about a solution!? :-O
Click to expand...
The solution is Adobes dedicated A2 RAW converter, if any solution
should be needed.

1. André shows a crop that is only 2,1 percent of a full A2 jpg
fine image.
2. Sometimes even he himself doesn't see "diagonal noise".
3. I proofed that even 2,1 percent of his (!) A2 image offers a
neat image without any noticable noise.

So my advice: go out and take pictures. You're not in the billboard
production industry en even when you were, your A2 will do the job,
if you forget your notebook to do postprocessing.

--
Looking for excellent 'how-to' articles about Minolta's A2 from
various authors?
See http://www.legene.com/a2
Click to expand...
 
Hi All

Just an observation, i don't have an A2 but have been reading this thread, and have observed that the visibility af the diagonal noise, at least on my LCD monitor, is clearly visible from left going up towards right, when looking at the monitor a little form the left. When looking from dead center it is almost not visible and definately not diagonal, finally when looking slightly from the right nosie can be seen, but not diaganol.

I'm sure that a CRT monitor would not exhibit this behavior, but the LCD screen does.

This might be an explanation as to why people conceives the same opictures so differently, but anyway the prints ought to ve conclusive, so noise is there, but maby not diagonal in all cases ?

Cheers
Peter
--
http://www.pbase.com/pmthor/
 
pmthor said:
Hi All
Just an observation, i don't have an A2 but have been reading this
thread, and have observed that the visibility af the diagonal
noise, at least on my LCD monitor, is clearly visible from left
going up towards right, when looking at the monitor a little form
the left. When looking from dead center it is almost not visible
and definately not diagonal, finally when looking slightly from the
right nosie can be seen, but not diaganol.
I'm sure that a CRT monitor would not exhibit this behavior, but
the LCD screen does.
This might be an explanation as to why people conceives the same
opictures so differently, but anyway the prints ought to ve
conclusive, so noise is there, but maby not diagonal in all cases ?

Cheers
Peter
Click to expand...
An explanation allright. I was puzzled with the fact that reputable members here can't see it? How can that be? Now I just wait for them to post and tell us they have checked the pics with three different monitors and that the diagonal banding still can't be observed... :) Really, I hope they all will report they can see it.

I can see it. While loading the pics on my laptop the view differs with the angle between the screen and my eyses. From some angles it is hard to recognize the banding lines, from others it is easy to see.

I really wish there was no problem like this one. Now that there really is a banding noise I wish Minolta took it seriously. Why is it no reprs from the factory are present here in the forum?
--
Jonas B
 
Ferenc MOGOR said:
I also belong to those who can not see the diagonal banding of your
picture on my screen. :-)
Click to expand...
This did pop up in some messages already, it's difficult to see on a TFT, maybe you have one?
Ferenc MOGOR said:
Probably the only way you could show the forum is to make a
screenshot and post it here!
Click to expand...
:-) That would not help, sorry. A screen shot is a 'picture' of a part of video memory; the bits that make up the screen image. So if posted in the same format, the result is the same. (That is, if you make the screen shot in a losless format, like TIF. And that I can't post here anyway).

This thread is getting a bit out of hand. ;-)

I was thinking diagonal noise was a accepted fact, many A2's have it. It was on this forum several times months ago.

But there was also this thread on this forum speculating that the compactflash card used could be the cause.

I was only pointing out the compactflash card makes a bit of difference, but there seems to be no 'clean' combination, it really is the camera on its own.

But it does not hurt to discuss diagonal noise agian, as long as Konica Minolta still ignores this defect. I'd like to concentrate on that, what can we (those having a bad A2) do about this.
This is not how I've known Minolta in the past 35 years.

Boyd
 
André wrote:

Of course, a removing noise software does the job. But I have only Photoshop 7, and there's no functionnality to remove noise, as far as I know, so I must use first a noise-removing software, and then post process the picture in PS : quite boring...

André, you really should take a better look at Noise Ninja. You do not need Photoshop because it's a standalone application (too). And you don't have to correct every image yourself because Noise Ninja contains A2 profiles for each ISO number, so the job can be done in batch mode. Just add a folder with any number of pictures to NN and it will run through your images.

And you will love the fact that NN isn't able at all to process RAW files. So shoot your jpegs, let NN do its job with one push on your mouse button and there you are.

--
Looking for excellent 'how-to' articles about Minolta's A2 from various authors?
See http://www.legene.com/a2
 
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