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WARNING! Do not use S2 near powerful antenna!

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CJ NYC

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Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures, all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

 
Most tall building in large cities, (NYC, Chicago etc), use them as a means of supporting antennas. These are shared between TV and FM stations and there is a lot of strong radio frequency radiation there. Any electronic device is going to be interferred with. I suspect that you'd get the same results with Nikon, Canon or other brands of digital camera or camcorders.
--
Mike Flood
 
I had pretty much assumed that to be the case but you could imagine my surprise when I opened up the files. There were lots of tourists up there shooting with digicams, hope they're not too dissappointed!
Mike Flood said:
Most tall building in large cities, (NYC, Chicago etc), use them as
a means of supporting antennas. These are shared between TV and FM
stations and there is a lot of strong radio frequency radiation
there. Any electronic device is going to be interferred with. I
suspect that you'd get the same results with Nikon, Canon or other
brands of digital camera or camcorders.
--
Mike Flood
Click to expand...
 
I also meant to add that by the 35th frame, I was getting the dreaded "Err" after every other shot as it tried to write to the 1GB Microdrive.
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
 
A lead housing isn't needed; but a really good Faraday cage couldn't hurt. And if those microwaves are doing that to your S2, what are they doing to you?

Anthony
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
 
You could ask the US Navy as they have spent much time looking into the effects very hight RF fields and people on aircraft carriers. Which has 100's of times greater power output from many devices. They say it OK as far as they will tell us.

I guess you weill have to avoid the underground too and a few other places.

Alex
Anthony said:
A lead housing isn't needed; but a really good Faraday cage
couldn't hurt. And if those microwaves are doing that to your S2,
what are they doing to you?
Click to expand...
 
This led me to this question:

Then, what would happen if you use Radio-slave to trigger flashes wirelessly? Has anyone any experience w/ S2 and Radio Slaves? Does Radio slave affect the camera in any way?

Thanks,
The'
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
  • 'To achieve immortality, share your knowledge'
  • 'A day normally starts out 95% good; the other 5% is upto you.'
 
Craig, you may have found the source of the "tracking noise" problem (It looks kind of like that doesn't it) A poorly shielded polycarbonate plastic camera housing! Next time, wrap the camera in aluminum foil and connect it to ground through a 100KOhm resistor.

Regards,

Matt
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
Matt
 
Next time I'm at the top of the Empire State Building taking pictures, I'll make sure I have one of those with me! ;)
Matt Chroust said:
Regards,

Matt
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
Matt
Click to expand...
 
Adrian,

Which maker of Radio slave are you using? Quantum? And what do you think if them in comparison to IR slave, which is cheaper radio slaves?

Thanks,
The'
Adrian Hood said:
I use radio slaves often and have not noticed any funny patterns in
my images.

Adrian
Click to expand...
--
  • 'To achieve immortality, share your knowledge'
  • 'A day normally starts out 95% good; the other 5% is upto you.'
 
Hi there,

For any electronic device you buy for home/work, you will find written somewhere that it complies with the XXXX standards (guess XX depends on if in US or Europe), which basically means that nothing from that device is going to interfeer in the others around it, and that it will operate correctly under some ammount of interference.

Basically, you cannot compare any home electronic device with those antennas, mostly if they are mobile phone microwave antennas.

Best,
Dioni
 
Thanks Dioni!

The'
Dioni Morena said:
Hi there,

For any electronic device you buy for home/work, you will find
written somewhere that it complies with the XXXX standards (guess
XX depends on if in US or Europe), which basically means that
nothing from that device is going to interfeer in the others around
it, and that it will operate correctly under some ammount of
interference.

Basically, you cannot compare any home electronic device with those
antennas, mostly if they are mobile phone microwave antennas.

Best,
Dioni
Click to expand...
--
  • 'To achieve immortality, share your knowledge'
  • 'A day normally starts out 95% good; the other 5% is upto you.'
 
This is same as what I have seen!
Check links below:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=3674846
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=3687683
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
Billy Lin
http://www.pbase.com/billybilly2000/
 
Hi Craig,

This makes a lot of sense. Those antennas spit millions of watts and at different frequencies.

There maybe be other factors in the phenomenon though.

Very interresting observation !

Regards,

David
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
 
From what I remember from my school days and my experience with computers, you need a cage made of ferro-magnetic material such as steel to shield from radio waves - not aluminium. So don't be disappointed if wrapping the camera in al-foil doesn't help. I lived in a steel yacht for 5 years and always had to have an external aerial for the trannie or the tele :-)
--
Doug Jones
Canberra
http://www.panamagic.com.au
 
I wonder if it could be lighting that is causing the problem. The reason I ask is that I just looked over some pictures that I took with the S2 on the Empire State recently in the daytime (actually on September 11, as a puny act of defiance and remembrance, but that is another story).

Anyway, I looked closely at the originals and couldn't see any trace of noise. Smaller versions are shown below. These were shot with two different lenses, and all (I think) at ISO 160. I also shot from all for sides of the building - all without noise. Of course the antennas would function in the daytime, but the lighting would not.

Anyway, for what it's worth...

Oh, and by the way, the moire in some of the buildings is an artifact of the low-res JPEGs, the originals are clean.





 
Oh, and by the way, I also have shot in several other very noisy (electrically speaking) environments including a subway switching station, and an electrical generating plant without any noise showing up (at least not more than I get anywhere else). Some of these shots were high-ISO (800 & 1,600) and longish exposures (up to about 2 seconds). So, to date, I haven't run across any artifacts that appear to be caused by the electromagnetic environment.

Best,

GPP
 
Could be - Maybe it's the 60Hz, and some harmonic closely matches the scan rate of the CCD or something. Another possiblity is that the interference/noise is still there during the day, but it is masked by the stronger "signal" generated under normal daytime shooting conditions - Much like the stars and moon not being visible during the day - under most conditions ;)

I'm guessing you might be shooting higher ISO at night, too? The amplifiers in the camera would have higher gain and the noise level would be higher? Maybe someone could arrange to be there when the lights come on for a test?

Regards,

Matt
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
Matt
 
My shots were taken at extended shutter speeds, most greater than two seconds. I have a feeling that the short shutter speeds that shooting in the daytime required you to use limited the exposure.
Matt Chroust said:
I'm guessing you might be shooting higher ISO at night, too? The
amplifiers in the camera would have higher gain and the noise level
would be higher? Maybe someone could arrange to be there when the
lights come on for a test?

Regards,

Matt
Craig - NYC said:
Last night I went up to the Empire State Building's observation
deck with my S2 and very excited to get some beautiful shots of
Manhattan. I was up ther for about an hour and shot 50 pictures,
all in RAW. When I got them home and converted them, diagonal were
running through every picture! Then, frightened that my camera
might be going bad after 1000 shots, I took a picture in my
apartment with the same exact settings - ISO200, f8, 2 second
shutter speed. The picture was clean, absolutely no sign of the
noise pattern. Does this mean we're going to have to come up with
some kind of lead housing for the S2? Please find the an example
of the noise below. This is a 100% crop from the original.

-Craig

Click to expand...
--
Matt
Click to expand...
 
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