The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 has horrific flare characteristics

texinwien wrote:

Tom Axford wrote:

texinwien wrote:

I think the negative vibes are coming from people who, like me, have had images unnecessarily ruined by this banding. It rubs me the wrong way to hear people try to minimize a problem that's very real for me, a photographer who also has max ISO set to 1600 on his E-M5.

Tom, here's the same image with exposure boosted to 1.5, contrast dialed down to -33, luminance NR set to 0 and purple hue set to 0. The purpose of this image is to help you see where the banding occurs, after which I think it will be easier for you to pick it out in the image I shared earlier (which, as I stated elsewhere, I had applied several tricks to in order to try to minimize the appearance of the pattern noise).

Use this version of the image to note where banding is most prominent. The same banding is visible in the previous version(s) of the image I shared in this thread, although it's certainly less prominent. Whether or not one finds the level of banding evident in any or all of these images problematic or distracting is certainly a matter of taste. I find the banding evident in all three versions of this photo that I shared here to be distracting.

1600 ISO, no shadow-pushing, plenty of banding = a ruined image that might have otherwise turned out quite nice.

I have scrutinised this image for several minutes and I cannot see any banding.

My eyesight isn't great, either, but the banding is immediately apparent to me. I don't even have to view the image in full-size to be able to pick out the wider, purplish color banding.

What should I be looking for? Are they horizontal bands, vertical bands, thick, thin, across the whole image or just part of it?

Horizontal bands, most prominent across the top third of the photo, both thick (color noise shifting between blue and purple hues in the sky) and thin (luminance noise shifting between darker and lighter).

Sorry, but my eyesight may not be as good as some, and I need some help to see the bands you are referring to.

I've shared this image with a number of people, and you're the first who's said he's unable to see the banding. Perhaps you're less disturbed by pattern noise than most, although, AFAIK, that would be highly untypical, as I'm quite certain most people find pattern noise significantly more distracting than noise with a more random, gaussian distribution.