Sony A7III Posterization and Colored Banding

I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections. The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.

here is a related thread about this banding: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1545500/0
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.
Some more, some less, some not at all. It shows in all of them. After reading through this disucssion, do you still think that this is about correct exposure? Do you believe that underexposing with a Sony by 2-stops should result in posterization?
here is a related thread about this banding: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1545500/0
 
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.

here is a related thread about this banding: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1545500/0
I agree that the shots were underexposed. But the 12 sided polygon coloured bands were quite obvious when pushed by 1.5 stops or less. That's not a lot of pushing.

Sony makes fantastic sensors and with an otherwise identical lens on the camera (a lens unsupported by the firmware) it would be possible to push the exposures by a few more stops with none of these artifacts.

On this very forum, ISO-invariant shooting strategies have been discussed. The sensor itself is very capable of supporting such strategies. However the firmware "support" of certain lenses makes this impossible.

Why on earth should an expensive camera produce similar artifacts to a cell-phone?

Mark

--
Takahashi Epsilon 180ED
H-alpha modified Sony A7S
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/
 
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I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.
Some more, some less, some not at all. It shows in all of them. After reading through this disucssion,
despite your rabid postings in three threads about this issue, you are still in denial about the role that your underexposure played in this issue.
do you still think that this is about correct exposure? Do you believe that underexposing with a Sony by 2-stops should result in posterization?
you underexposed by over 2 stops in general, which means far more than two stops in the problem areas.

read the thread below.
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.

here is a related thread about this banding: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1545500/0
I agree that the shots were underexposed. But the 12 sided polygon coloured bands were quite obvious when pushed by 1.5 stops or less. That's not a lot of pushing.
I posted a horribly underexposed a7r pic, with extreme vignetting, that didn't have any banding whatsoever, and it was pushed a whole lot harder than 1.5 stops in post.

maybe I should try that with the a9.
Sony makes fantastic sensors and with an otherwise identical lens on the camera (a lens unsupported by the firmware) it would be possible to push the exposures by a few more stops with none of these artifacts.
if you read the snapsy post in the thread link, it looks like turning off lens corrections did disable the vignetting correction in the raw file, in that test case.

but that's apparently not the end of it.
On this very forum, ISO-invariant shooting strategies have been discussed. The sensor itself is very capable of supporting such strategies. However the firmware "support" of certain lenses makes this impossible.
why do you call it "impossible".
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.
Some more, some less, some not at all. It shows in all of them. After reading through this disucssion,
despite your rabid postings in three threads about this issue, you are still in denial about the role that your underexposure played in this issue.
Underexposing and lifting in post makes it more visible. That doesn't change the fact it is there. But underexposure is not the root cause. Please read this whole thread.
do you still think that this is about correct exposure? Do you believe that underexposing with a Sony by 2-stops should result in posterization?
you underexposed by over 2 stops in general, which means far more than two stops in the problem areas.
What's your answer to my first question? I take it that the answer to the second one is "yes".
 
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.

here is a related thread about this banding: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1545500/0
I agree that the shots were underexposed. But the 12 sided polygon coloured bands were quite obvious when pushed by 1.5 stops or less. That's not a lot of pushing.
I posted a horribly underexposed a7r pic, with extreme vignetting, that didn't have any banding whatsoever, and it was pushed a whole lot harder than 1.5 stops in post.

maybe I should try that with the a9.
Sony makes fantastic sensors and with an otherwise identical lens on the camera (a lens unsupported by the firmware) it would be possible to push the exposures by a few more stops with none of these artifacts.
if you read the snapsy post in the thread link, it looks like turning off lens corrections did disable the vignetting correction in the raw file, in that test case.

but that's apparently not the end of it.
On this very forum, ISO-invariant shooting strategies have been discussed. The sensor itself is very capable of supporting such strategies. However the firmware "support" of certain lenses makes this impossible.
why do you call it "impossible".
What I mean is that it the coloured banding becomes obtrusive when pushed in post-processing.

From the evidence we are accumulating, it would appear that all lenses that are supported by the camera firmware (i.e. a table of corrections exists in the EXIF) will produce some kind of large geometrical artifact (applied to the pixel values in the raw data) whether or not the in-camera vignetting correction is switched on.

It might be the case that this happens only in V2.0 of the A7III firmware. This awaits confirmation one way or the other.

Mark

--
Takahashi Epsilon 180ED
H-alpha modified Sony A7S
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/
 
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I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.
Some more, some less, some not at all. It shows in all of them. After reading through this disucssion,
despite your rabid postings in three threads about this issue, you are still in denial about the role that your underexposure played in this issue.
do you still think that this is about correct exposure? Do you believe that underexposing with a Sony by 2-stops should result in posterization?
you underexposed by over 2 stops in general, which means far more than two stops in the problem areas.

read the thread below.
So over at Fred Miranda they discuss the same issue. And they discuss reduction in bit depth from 14bits as a possible cause? They seem to agree that exposure doesn't play a role. And it is not limited to the a7M3.
 
So over at Fred Miranda they discuss the same issue. And they discuss reduction in bit depth from 14bits as a possible cause? They seem to agree that exposure doesn't play a role. And it is not limited to the a7M3.
I disagree that reduction in bit depth is a possible cause. The quantization is adequately dithered by the noise even with the reduced bit depth. so reducing the bit depth should not introduce artifacts. In any case, in this thread we are seeing the issue in 14bit uncompressed data.

It is certainly not limited to the A7M3 because it is also well documented in the A7R2. But does it affect all firmware versions?

Mark
 
I've seen this on Samsung NX series and cell phone cams when saving DNG RAW without any baked-in corrections.
True. Huawei P20Pro does that.
The original conclusions supposed that it was a form of lens or vignetting correction.

Based on my pointing this out several years ago with Samsung hardware, I believe you can replicate the effect with other models than Sony. It's not simply a 'Sony Problem' and as others are pointing out, only appears under extreme post processing adjustments that are already well past the point of ruining the image for any practical application.
Look at some of the images from he wedding that I posted. Most have been edited within acceptable limits.
as several people have already told you, what you shot was underexposed, so it had to be pushed harder than it should have been, if you shot it correctly.
Some more, some less, some not at all. It shows in all of them. After reading through this disucssion,
despite your rabid postings in three threads about this issue, you are still in denial about the role that your underexposure played in this issue.
do you still think that this is about correct exposure? Do you believe that underexposing with a Sony by 2-stops should result in posterization?
you underexposed by over 2 stops in general, which means far more than two stops in the problem areas.

read the thread below.
So over at Fred Miranda they discuss the same issue. And they discuss reduction in bit depth from 14bits as a possible cause? They seem to agree that exposure doesn't play a role.
I don't recall seeing that claim, and yes, the photo was severely underexposed:

"The file is about a stop and a half underexposed, even if you want to retain in the very bright highlight area. See the histogram attached.

If we look at the upper left corner stats, we can see the blue channel average is about 900. The black point is 512, so the net blue average is about 400. That's more than five stops down from full scale."
And it is not limited to the a7M3.
I didn't see that claim, and I don't see banding with my a9/fe90, per the pic i'm posting below.
 
What I mean is that it the coloured banding becomes obtrusive when pushed in post-processing.
what is the root cause of that tho? is control data in the raw file responsible for it?
From the evidence we are accumulating, it would appear that all lenses that are supported by the camera firmware (i.e. a table of corrections exists in the EXIF) will produce some kind of large geometrical artifact (applied to the pixel values in the raw data) whether or not the in-camera vignetting correction is switched on.

It might be the case that this happens only in V2.0 of the A7III firmware. This awaits confirmation one way or the other.
it might be triggered by other things as well... here is the a9/fe90, with all lens corrections turned off, I don't see any banding, and it's severely underexposed, and pushed hard in post.

although i'd like to know why I can't get the color balanced to white, which is what I shot on the screen, using awb... I shot this with the electronic shutter:

30cd8221957344ba9c608b2dda9b6b0f.jpg

32cc0b968fc54ee8bff96fee5911a758.jpg
 
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So over at Fred Miranda they discuss the same issue. And they discuss reduction in bit depth from 14bits as a possible cause? They seem to agree that exposure doesn't play a role.
I don't recall seeing that claim, and yes, the photo was severely underexposed:

"The file is about a stop and a half underexposed, even if you want to retain in the very bright highlight area. See the histogram attached.

If we look at the upper left corner stats, we can see the blue channel average is about 900. The black point is 512, so the net blue average is about 400. That's more than five stops down from full scale."
And it is not limited to the a7M3.
I didn't see that claim, and I don't see banding with my a9/fe90, per the pic i'm posting below.
I just downloaded the raw file provided by the OP in that Fred Miranda thread. I can't believe I'm saying this but there is nothing wrong with his image! I pushed the data really hard and it certainly doesn't display the geometric 12-sided artifact that we are discussing in this thread. In any case he was shooting at F/10 so it wouldn't need much of a vignetting correction in the first place. Instead, we typically see the problem when the lens is used wide open.

Mark
 
What I mean is that it the coloured banding becomes obtrusive when pushed in post-processing.
what is the root cause of that tho? is control data in the raw file responsible for it?
That's the interesting question. We don't know for sure. All we know is that the camera firmware is applying a crude correction to the actual image data before it writes the raw file.

We also see information in the EXIF, for example:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 32 96 224 384 576 864 1248 1728 2368 3200 4256 5472 6816 8224 9632

Maybe that is telling us what correction parameters were applied to the data. If we knew how to interpret those numbers it might give us a very big clue.
From the evidence we are accumulating, it would appear that all lenses that are supported by the camera firmware (i.e. a table of corrections exists in the EXIF) will produce some kind of large geometrical artifact (applied to the pixel values in the raw data) whether or not the in-camera vignetting correction is switched on.

It might be the case that this happens only in V2.0 of the A7III firmware. This awaits confirmation one way or the other.
it might be triggered by other things as well... here is the a9/fe90, with all lens corrections turned off, I don't see any banding, and it's severely underexposed, and pushed hard in post.
I haven't seen any A9 examples. Not yet, at least.

Mark

--
Takahashi Epsilon 180ED
H-alpha modified Sony A7S
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/
 
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In the image EXIF when using an affected lens, we find an entry similar to this:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 32 96 224 384 576 864 1248 1728 2368 3200 4256 5472 6816 8224 9632

It's a table of 16 numbers. This is what it looks like when plotted:

582cfb2e7b7445b0a005792542dee9a1.jpg.png

It's possible that it represents the light intensity fall-off as we move away from the image centre



Here's a lens that was unrecognised by the camera:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0



Here's a lens that was recognised, but there is not a full table:

Vignetting Corr Params : 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I wonder what "11" means?

Mark

--
Takahashi Epsilon 180ED
H-alpha modified Sony A7S
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/
 
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What I mean is that it the coloured banding becomes obtrusive when pushed in post-processing.
what is the root cause of that tho? is control data in the raw file responsible for it?
That's the interesting question. We don't know for sure. All we know is that the camera firmware is applying a crude correction to the actual image data before it writes the raw file.

We also see information in the EXIF, for example:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 32 96 224 384 576 864 1248 1728 2368 3200 4256 5472 6816 8224 9632
Would you expect to see a difference in these parameters with lens correction "on" or "off"? Could it be that these parameters are sensor shading corrections for the particular lens? My understanding was that lens shading correction and other lens corrections are stored in the lens, not the camera.
Maybe that is telling us what correction parameters were applied to the data. If we knew how to interpret those numbers it might give us a very big clue.
From the evidence we are accumulating, it would appear that all lenses that are supported by the camera firmware (i.e. a table of corrections exists in the EXIF) will produce some kind of large geometrical artifact (applied to the pixel values in the raw data) whether or not the in-camera vignetting correction is switched on.

It might be the case that this happens only in V2.0 of the A7III firmware. This awaits confirmation one way or the other.
it might be triggered by other things as well... here is the a9/fe90, with all lens corrections turned off, I don't see any banding, and it's severely underexposed, and pushed hard in post.
I haven't seen any A9 examples. Not yet, at least.

Mark
 
I observed the same thing with my NEX-5N and A6000 . It's an "old", well-known issue.

This circular banding shows up when pushing shadows and using native E-mount lenses with vignetting correction turned on.

Samsung are using the same approach (the effect looks 100% the same there). With Samsung cameras it was always applied, and not just when corrections where turned on.

Up to the A7II turning off the vignetting correction would remove this artifact.

It would be rather stupid move from Sony if the A7III applies it all the time.
One question, though: It is actually baked into the RAW data or is the post-processing software doing auto-corrections already? I barely see anything else mentioned than LR, which is putting all the arguing on very thin ice. It is well known that LR does some auto-corrections based on their camera profiles already, and I'm not even sure if that is part of the actual camera profiles or is something happening beside that.

Also, noone can actually tell you how LR processes data internally. There are all kinds of ways how to make things worse or better just by how the "analog" data is processed within the digital realm.
 
I observed the same thing with my NEX-5N and A6000 . It's an "old", well-known issue.

This circular banding shows up when pushing shadows and using native E-mount lenses with vignetting correction turned on.

Samsung are using the same approach (the effect looks 100% the same there). With Samsung cameras it was always applied, and not just when corrections where turned on.

Up to the A7II turning off the vignetting correction would remove this artifact.

It would be rather stupid move from Sony if the A7III applies it all the time.
One question, though: It is actually baked into the RAW data or is the post-processing software doing auto-corrections already? I barely see anything else mentioned than LR, which is putting all the arguing on very thin ice. It is well known that LR does some auto-corrections based on their camera profiles already, and I'm not even sure if that is part of the actual camera profiles or is something happening beside that.

Also, noone can actually tell you how LR processes data internally. There are all kinds of ways how to make things worse or better just by how the "analog" data is processed within the digital realm.
It shows in all editors that I use (LR 6.14, C1 (11&12), Imaging Edge, PSE 2019).
 
In the image EXIF when using an affected lens, we find an entry similar to this:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 32 96 224 384 576 864 1248 1728 2368 3200 4256 5472 6816 8224 9632

It's a table of 16 numbers. This is what it looks like when plotted:

582cfb2e7b7445b0a005792542dee9a1.jpg.png

It's possible that it represents the light intensity fall-off as we move away from the image centre

Here's a lens that was unrecognised by the camera:

Vignetting Corr Params : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Here's a lens that was recognised, but there is not a full table:

Vignetting Corr Params : 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I wonder what "11" means?

Mark
Mark, do you think the shading corrections data with a lens that is recognized is "lens shading" information? Or could it be sensor shading correction data for that particular lens. If a lens is not recognized (dump adapter), the camera doesn't correct for at all. If it is recognized (EF lenses) but the camera has no shading correction data for it, "11" applies like a generic sensor shading correction? Your example with the "11", was that with the Samyang 24 or the Canon FE40?

Just checked with RAW Digger:

Vignetting Corr Params FE28
0 288 832 1568 2464 3520 4672 5856 7008 8128 9216 10240 11168 12032 12800 13600

Vignetting Corr Params EF2470/2.8
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Vignetting Corr Params Minolta Legacy Lens in Novoflex
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0



The numbers for the FE28 are teh same regardless of in-camera correction setting.
 
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