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5N banding at high ISO?!

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ntsan

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For some reason when shooting a scene with bright moon I see banding across it





So I tried shoot in portrait and there is still banding?!





So I then change to ISO3200 but banding still there?



 
My first guess is that DRO is on auto. Seems like I've read that somewhere before--that it tends to interfere in low light.

--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
 
Not really seeing and banding on my (admittedly poor) work monitor.

I see a lot of lens flare and possibly artefacts from same. Are you using a filter on your lens?

Trying to figure out which part of Auckland you're shooting from.
 
In my experience, shooting RAW and processing will in itself remove this as it is a result of the general approximation of pixels (that's what a JPG compression does). The compression can group areas of like pixels and colors, and where these areas meet (at the threshold) it can be seen when the compression is too high.

If you shoot RAW, the photo won't have it, and you can export it at a quality that retains all the gradients without banding.

Worth a shot!

PS. May want to consider a longer exposure and lower ISO if you want night landscape scenes to turn out nice and sharp :)
 
ntsan said:
For some reason when shooting a scene with bright moon I see banding across it





So I tried shoot in portrait and there is still banding?!



Click to expand...
Did you rotate the camera between these two shots? I see a dark horizontal line in the first shot and a dark vertical line in the second shot where the moon is.

This is like the opposite of what would happen with CCD sensors, where a hot spot would cause a streak across the image.
 
Slynky said:
My first guess is that DRO is on auto. Seems like I've read that somewhere before--that it tends to interfere in low light.
Click to expand...
It is turned off, don't really like the rendition from DRO
Senaca said:
In my experience, shooting RAW and processing will in itself remove this as it is a result of the general approximation of pixels (that's what a JPG compression does). The compression can group areas of like pixels and colors, and where these areas meet (at the threshold) it can be seen when the compression is too high.

If you shoot RAW, the photo won't have it, and you can export it at a quality that retains all the gradients without banding.

Worth a shot!

PS. May want to consider a longer exposure and lower ISO if you want night landscape scenes to turn out nice and sharp :)
Click to expand...
I guess I could try next time
redsim74 said:
Not really seeing and banding on my (admittedly poor) work monitor.

I see a lot of lens flare and possibly artefacts from same. Are you using a filter on your lens?

Trying to figure out which part of Auckland you're shooting from.
Click to expand...
No filter is used on the 16mm
btw it was close to AGG
Scott Larson said:
Did you rotate the camera between these two shots? I see a dark horizontal line in the first shot and a dark vertical line in the second shot where the moon is.

This is like the opposite of what would happen with CCD sensors, where a hot spot would cause a streak across the image.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think it could be the nature of CMOS sensor to blame
 
What you're seeing is blooming - in brief, the overexposed moon causes overcharging of the photodiodes and the result is a streak which runs left to right (from the sensor's point of view) across the image. There isn't much you can do about it, unfortunately, other than use a different camera for scenes in which blooming will occur.
 
Scott Larson said:
This is like the opposite of what would happen with CCD sensors, where a hot spot would cause a streak across the image.
Click to expand...
Blooming causes charge to bleed across rows of elements within the sensor so if you turn the camera on its side, the resulting image has the streak(s) running vertically.
 
rickyclicks said:
rickyclicks said:
This is like the opposite of what would happen with CCD sensors, where a hot spot would cause a streak across the image.
Click to expand...
Blooming causes charge to bleed across rows of elements within the sensor so if you turn the camera on its side, the resulting image has the streak(s) running vertically.
Click to expand...
In one image the streak is vertical and in another the streak is horizontal.

Which image was taken with the camera on its side? I think you can guess.
 
rickyclicks said:
What you're seeing is blooming - in brief, the overexposed moon causes overcharging of the photodiodes and the result is a streak which runs left to right (from the sensor's point of view) across the image.
Click to expand...
Which doesn't happen with CMOS sensors. That's an attribute of CCD "bucket brigade" shift register sensors.
 
Scott Larson said:
Which doesn't happen with CMOS sensors. That's an attribute of CCD "bucket brigade" shift register sensors.
Click to expand...
The specific mechanisms aside, the shots above illustrate blooming. Charge bleedover occurs in charge-coupled devices but with active pixel sensors, blooming sometimes appears as a result of a failure to fully discharge rows around the readout phase. The same problem affects the D700...just search for "D700 blooming" and you'll see what I mean...
 
ntsan said:
For some reason when shooting a scene with bright moon I see banding across it
Click to expand...
Well, I didn't see it... so I've applied the retinex algorithm to enhance the flaws:





Even so, I don't see much to complain about here -- it's way better than most DSLRs I've seen.

There is a line across the frame that probably is an analog artifact caused by gross overexposure of the moon. Some of the other noise also correlates with the horizontal scan, which is usually due to digital noise from the processor, but it's less than I'm used to seeing. Basically, it looks like a mild case of normal high-ISO noise with a bit of vignetting. JPEG artifacting (8x8 pixel blocking) is most visible in the flare from the lights, but overall is less severe than I'd expect given the scene.

Such defects are there for most cameras, but unnoticed, until one day you're pixel-peeping.... ;)
 
redsim74 said:
Not really seeing and banding on my (admittedly poor) work monitor.
Click to expand...
Nor am I seeing any banding on this Iiyama CRT monitor. I suspect your monitor. Are you sure you are not using a 16-bit setting?

Does the banding show on a print?
redsim74 said:
I see a lot of lens flare and possibly artefacts from same. Are you using a filter on your lens?

Trying to figure out which part of Auckland you're shooting from.
Click to expand...
 
There could be a chance this is a lens problem.
Although, as others stated, it's a pixel peeping problem.
 
The last image is very bad, for iso3200 its amongst the worse images I have ever seen on dpreview, p&s included The nex is a high iso machine or so we are led to believe, this couldnt be further from the truth if these results are anything to go by, dreadful.
ntsan said:
For some reason when shooting a scene with bright moon I see banding across it





So I tried shoot in portrait and there is still banding?!





So I then change to ISO3200 but banding still there?



Click to expand...
 
It is noticeable on the 5N screen, that why I took a few more pictures, man some of you need better monitors if you can't see

And yeah thanks to some of you guy's explanation so it is booming not banding. I can't believe I am the only one who notice this problem?
D Cox said:
redsim74 said:
Not really seeing and banding on my (admittedly poor) work monitor.
Click to expand...
Nor am I seeing any banding on this Iiyama CRT monitor. I suspect your monitor. Are you sure you are not using a 16-bit setting?

Does the banding show on a print?
D Cox said:
I see a lot of lens flare and possibly artefacts from same. Are you using a filter on your lens?

Trying to figure out which part of Auckland you're shooting from.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
  • Were these shot in RAW? And if so, what did you use to process them?
  • Did you brighten (push) the exposures afterwards? If so, how much?
 
ntsan said:
It is noticeable on the 5N screen, that why I took a few more pictures, man some of you need better monitors if you can't see

And yeah thanks to some of you guy's explanation so it is booming not banding. I can't believe I am the only one who notice this problem?
Click to expand...
Pointing at a beach ball and saying why can't you see the freight train will get the same reaction.

I don't think that's blooming either. My guess would be that humidity was close to the dew point and what you're looking at is normal atmospheric haze enhanced by gross overexposure of the light sources. If so, it has nothing to do with your camera.

It is possible that it is sensor blooming, but the sensors in NEX are not prone to that. It is more likely that it is slight haze or scratches in/on your lens, or even internal reflections involving the sensor and/or a filter (flat filters are the cause of a lot of halation-like glow).

To check for these problems, take a LED penlight, remove your lens, and closely examine it with the light -- especially look for smudges on the rear element. If there is no sign of haze, smudges, or scratches, remount the lens (without any filters) and take an in-focus photo of the penlight from a distance of 10 or more feet away in a darkened low-humidity room. If you don't see huge "blooming" from that, it was simply a hazy night (atmospheric scattering).
 
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