Problems with 5D Mk 2

[Ted1212]

I've just got a 5D Mk2 from BH with a 70-200 f4 IS, I thought initially there must be something in the settings that wasn't put right, but now I'm more convinced there is something wrong with the camera.

The problems are:

a) Some blacks become greys, greens become blues, the color balance goes bluish on AWB and way out.

b) There is always visible noise that 'twinkles' on video.

c) Colors are even worse on video, some blacks become medium/light blue.

d) There is noise and banding in stills on ISO 250.

e) I shot through a window at a tree silhouetted against the sky and the thinner branches all came out purple. Could a window do this?

I've checked through the menus and it looks to me that I have everything set up correctly, anyone have any advice?

 

[Graham Meale]

Sounds odd. Can you post some examples?
--
http://www.users.bigpond.com/g.w.meale

 

[Jordan Wilberding]

Are these RAWs or JPEGs?

I am starting to get curious about people recently mentioning seeing purple in their pictures all of the sudden with this camera.

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Thanks!
Jordan Wilberding
http://diginux.net

 

[PerAnders]

I see some purple fringing at the edges of shots taken with my wide angles (EF 17-40L and Tamron SP 24-135). Looks just like standard chromatic aberration to me, though I'm not completely sure why purple in particular and not red/green blue/yellow. Could be a recent surge in popularity of specific Canon semi-wide angle lenses.

Anyhow for me apart from that (and the noise, horizontal high iso banding, dead pixels, banding/posterisation in dark areas/lack of dynamic range in the darks, and a surprisingly large circle of confusion on the 17-40 resulting in quite soft images) it's all good, I assume most of my problems are coming from inexperience though (I should probably try shooting only in RAW at

 

[Ted1212]

Here are some samples, the stills were shot as jpegs.

The first is a crop at ISO 250.



The second is a crop of a still of a video, the bed should be black.



The third is a crop of some trees with purple branches.

 

[Stepanfo]

Noise at ISO 250 looks quite awfull, I cannot see any "purple branches", they look OK to me.

 

[Stepanfo]

Noise in shadow areas has already been well documented here

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/PushingTheBlacks/index.html

but I didnt expect it to be so visible even in such normal unprocessed(?) picture.

 

[apixel]

Although noise has been documented well, that shot is way too noisy. It might be that 250 is not a good number to shoot at? Try 160 and 320 and see if you get better results than at 250. Also try the more natural numbers - 200, 400 etc

250 might be those "pushed" iso's, and this camera does very poorly with pushed shadows.

On video there is always splatter-like-twinkle noise. That bothers me too. It seems that they are just compressing the video too much. No point in having this gigantic video with all those artifacts. ( But ... it does downsize very nicely )

You color problems seem the worst of them all. That bed becoming blue! Have you tried a reset on your camera. Maybe this one was played with at the store and they changed something. I have definitely not had any problems with colors and video so far. ( Nothing that dramatic at least )

I don't see what you see on the branches - but backlit branches usually have some fringing in them ... with any camera.

I've just got a 5D Mk2 from BH with a 70-200 f4 IS, I thought
initially there must be something in the settings that wasn't put
right, but now I'm more convinced there is something wrong with the
camera.

The problems are:

a) Some blacks become greys, greens become blues, the color balance
goes bluish on AWB and way out.

b) There is always visible noise that 'twinkles' on video.

c) Colors are even worse on video, some blacks become medium/light blue.

d) There is noise and banding in stills on ISO 250.

e) I shot through a window at a tree silhouetted against the sky and
the thinner branches all came out purple. Could a window do this?

I've checked through the menus and it looks to me that I have
everything set up correctly, anyone have any advice?

--
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Photo gallery at: http://www.fotophoto.net/

 

[M Irwin]

Great advice here - hopefully it's just a whacked bunch of settings. Also, have you grossly adjusted your exposure up in software on the ISO250 image? Under no circumstance have I seen that kind of noise even on the "pushed" ISO that low. I likewise don't see fringing on the branches, but that's the least of your problems.

You color problems seem the worst of them all. That bed becoming
blue! Have you tried a reset on your camera. Maybe this one was
played with at the store and they changed something. I have
definitely not had any problems with colors and video so far. (
Nothing that dramatic at least )

I don't see what you see on the branches - but backlit branches
usually have some fringing in them ... with any camera.

 

[Ted1212]

Thanks for your replies.

Here is another example of the colors going strange, this time hair has taken on a green tint in a photo. It couldn't have purple and green fringing could it?



I can live with the purple fringing and just work around it, like it was said, its the least of the problems.

 

[gdanmitchell]

I see some purple fringing at the edges of shots taken with my wide
angles (EF 17-40L and Tamron SP 24-135).

I'm not seeing anything unusual at all with mine, if that helps any.

When you inspect at 100% magnification for artifacts like "purple fringing" do keep in mind that you are inspecting a smaller portion of the image at 21MP than you would be with, say, a 12MP 5D. For this reason, when the artifacts are exactly the same size in terms of the overall photograph, they will appear larger at 100%.

(A 100 x 100 section of a 21MP frame is smaller than a 100 x 100 section of a 12 MP frame.)

Dan

--
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G Dan Mitchell - SF Bay Area, California, USA
Blog & Gallery: http://www.gdanmitchell.com/
IM: gdanmitchell

Gear List: Cup, spoon, chewing gum, old shoe laces, spare change, eyeballs, bag of nuts.

 

[DogOfThunder]

Have you at least updated your firmware to the latest version? Not that it will fix your problems, but it does address a handful of documented issues and probably will fix a number of undocumented issues as well...

Tim
--
DogOfThunder

 

[bronxbombers]

doesn't it look like his darkest color in that the first crop is pretty light?

alsmot like shadows were way pulled or it was shot at -4 contrast and then overexposed a bit or something?

You color problems seem the worst of them all. That bed becoming
blue! Have you tried a reset on your camera. Maybe this one was
played with at the store and they changed something. I have
definitely not had any problems with colors and video so far. (
Nothing that dramatic at least )

I don't see what you see on the branches - but backlit branches
usually have some fringing in them ... with any camera.

 

[bronxbombers]

well the green hair is behind the plane of focus which is where green from LCA would show up, but i've never seen it that extreme or all encompassing so it would be hard to blame it on LCA.

was that one shot under fluorescent lighting? I did notice the 5dmki seems very prone to catching different parts of the frame at different cycles and getting a horrible mess of varied color balances across the frame, it looks like maybe that??

or perhaps the light form behind here is a much different color temp than the front light on her face??

Thanks for your replies.

Here is another example of the colors going strange, this time hair
has taken on a green tint in a photo. It couldn't have purple and
green fringing could it?



I can live with the purple fringing and just work around it, like it
was said, its the least of the problems.

 

[Ted1212]

It was shot outdoors. The same shots were taken with a Pentax camera and the colors were fine on that.

It's the latest firmware 1.07.

Yes, the ISO 250 shot is made a bit brighter to show the banding more clearly.

 

[PerAnders]

Oh absolutely, but these are quite large areas of purple fringing that would be visible down on a 6mp image:



ISO 800, 30 second long exposure Tamron 24-135 1/30, F18



ISO 6400, Tamron 24-135, 1/320, F11

Obviously it's around bright points as you'd expect, and higher ISO are producing the excessive noise in these test images, but the fringing still has a slightly odd... digital quality to its spread, I can't quite put my finger on it.

I see some purple fringing at the edges of shots taken with my wide
angles (EF 17-40L and Tamron SP 24-135).

I'm not seeing anything unusual at all with mine, if that helps any.

When you inspect at 100% magnification for artifacts like "purple
fringing" do keep in mind that you are inspecting a smaller portion
of the image at 21MP than you would be with, say, a 12MP 5D. For this
reason, when the artifacts are exactly the same size in terms of the
overall photograph, they will appear larger at 100%.

(A 100 x 100 section of a 21MP frame is smaller than a 100 x 100
section of a 12 MP frame.)

Dan

--
---
G Dan Mitchell - SF Bay Area, California, USA
Blog & Gallery: http://www.gdanmitchell.com/
IM: gdanmitchell
Gear List: Cup, spoon, chewing gum, old shoe laces, spare change,
eyeballs, bag of nuts.

 

[gdanmitchell]

1. 1 - This noise at 100% will be inconsequential in a final print even at a rather large size. Was any PP done to compensate for underexposure in this one? If so, especially when shot as jpg, this can significantly degrade this sort of image. (You are working with only 8 bits and in an area of very narrow dynamic range, e.g. - few bits left to describe luminance/chroma variations - and banding, etc. is a typical result when viewed at 100%.)

1. 2 - Can't comment on video mode since I haven't really used it on mine. I do know that what appears "black" can in reality be quite different depending upon reflected light, etc.

1. 3 - I'm not seeing anything unusual here at all. For a 100% magnification crop of branches against sky (OOF branches, no less!) this is absolutely fine, and the in-focus branches are very sharp, indeed.

Dan

Here are some samples, the stills were shot as jpegs...

--
---
G Dan Mitchell - SF Bay Area, California, USA
Blog & Gallery: http://www.gdanmitchell.com/
IM: gdanmitchell

Gear List: Cup, spoon, chewing gum, old shoe laces, spare change, eyeballs, bag of nuts.

 

[bronxbombers]

It was shot outdoors. The same shots were taken with a Pentax camera
and the colors were fine on that.

hmm pretty weird, i've never seen such a degree of green from a 70-200 f/4 IS on 40D,50D or 5dmkii before, no clue what to say

It's the latest firmware 1.07.

Yes, the ISO 250 shot is made a bit brighter to show the banding more
clearly.

maybe you pushed it too far

 

[koro]

hmm,

hopefully, you will somehow find an explanation for this happening and get this fix very soon.

i'm in a process of deciding between 5dII and d700 and that kind of images you posted makes me feel that 5dII is maybe not the right camera to pick from these two...

anyways, good luck!

--
http://www.peterkorcek.com

 

[rrcphoto]

make sure you have all the tricks turned off .. ALO, HTP, etc.

that headshot one was simply because you completely blew out the channels.

color is always / can be inderminate when you oversaturate.

try a different RAW converter and see if you get different / better results on the interpretation.