Canon 5D Mark II: Banding... c'mon, still?

[rishij]

<p>FYI the Nikon D200 banding seems entirely different, qualititatively, than what I'm talking about. Also, it doesn't just appear in the shadows for the D200. There was clearly some quality control issue there.</p>

[eric_larson3]

<p>The Nikon D200 was a CCD sensor camera.<br /> At $1600 MSRP it wasn't cheap either.</p>

 

[steve_hovland]

<p>We may be at the limits of what is physically possible. My view is that if I really need 3200 to get an image, no one including the B&G should expect it to look like 100.</p>

[vandit]

<p>I found a new problem with my cameras - they dont take photos with the lens cap on. What a horrible defect this is - even a pinhole camera can do that. What is Canon doing? And dont you Canon fanboys come here and try to defend that.<br>

"Yet here are Canonites defending seeing the banding on the newest, latest & greatest $2700 price tag Canon 5D Mark II."<br>

Yes - heaven forbid that anyone try to defend a camera that exhibits a problem in a scenario which would virtually NEVER apply in the real world. <br>

"Dave, I don't have a digital setup. I shoot film & was trying to justify switching but am unable to given the latest performance reviews of the 5D MII."<br>

So stick to film.... I dont mean to be rude but what is the point of griping about this? If you are trying to find out the cause of the banding, that is one thing. But going on and on about the defects of the 5DMk2 - when it has been pointed out several times to you how contrived the scenarios are, during which these so-called defects become apparent - is a bit pointless. And if you are just not happy about Canon's implementation - email Canon. <br>

Giampi was spot on the money here. If someone cannot take good photos with a 5DMk2, they should probably consider painting or some other hobby. <br>

Vandit</p>

[david_john_appleton]

<p>

<p >)))))Dave, I don't have a digital setup. I shoot film & was trying to justify switching but am unable to given the latest performance reviews of the 5D MII.<<<<</p>

<p >Well I not know that.</p>

<p >A digital image to me never looks as nice as film.... cannot tell you why Evan when the image has no banding etc I don’t think the reasons for this can be quantified</p>

<p >If you have a canon eos system maybe if you get a second hand 5Dmk1 to see how you get on with digital, By what I hear/guess, the defiance in IQ between the MK1 and MK11 will only show at hi iso and if you print at bigger than A3</p>

Dave<br /></p>

[rishij]

<blockquote>

<p>If you are trying to find out the cause of the banding, that is one thing.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You know how to read, Vandit, or did you just wanna jump to giving us your useless opinion such that you missed the premise of this entire post when I wrote in the OP:</p>

<p>"Anyway,<em> the purpose of this post</em> , <strong>to really figure out why it's there</strong> . Berg previously suggested that it's temporal variation, and if I understand this concept correctly, I don't understand why this temporal variation has to exist if scanners like the Nikon LS-9000, which scans 1 (or 3?) lines at a time, doesn't exhibit this sort of banding in extremely dense areas of Velvia 50 slide scans."</p>

<p>That being said, after getting a better idea of what causes, I'd be more comfortable e-mailing Canon about it. It's not like they couldn't use some help pinpointing their own problems, as one has to wonder how the 'black dots' problem ever made it past Q.C.</p>

<p>Then, 2 posts ago, I was asking if anyone had any ideas on how to get rid of the banding in software.</p>

<p>So, yeah, clearly I'm here just to gripe. You can also believe in Santa Claus, for all I care.<br>

-Rishi</p>

[igor_jarm]

<p>Rishi, a few ideas, how to remove the horizontal banding:<br>

1) take 4 or more exposures, average them so that temporal variations cancel out, and subtract an average of a number of dark frames to get rid of fixed noise pattern. I believe most of what will remain in the shadows will be foton noise (at high ISOs).<br>

Obviously you can only do this with static scenes.<br>

Actualy, doing that at high iso, is somewhat equivalent to taking a long exposure at low iso, except you can get even more dynamic range by not averaging, but by making a sum of exposures. You'd of course need a sum of the same number of dark frames made at the same ISO to effectively get rid of all non image forming noise.<br>

2) You could also make only 2 exposures in manual exposure mode one at say ISO 100, the other at ISO 1600. ISO 1600 would be used to extend the dynamic range by 4 stops in the shadow area. This way you'd push the banding 4 stops lower.<br>

3) Get rid of vertical banding by just subtracting the average of dark frames.<br /> You also get rid of some horizontal banding this way, but unfortunately you also lose information where there was no banding noise.</p>

<p>Needless to say, you'd get the best results doing all this in linear 16bit rgb space before you apply other corrections.</p>

<p>p.s. I don't do any of this, as I said earlier, for my needs out of camera raw to jpeg conversion is good enough.</p>

[rishij]

<p>Interesting that the Nikon LS-8000 exhibited banding in shadows.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CS8K/C8A.HTM">http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CS8K/C8A.HTM</a></p>

<p>The article says:<em><br /> </em><br>

<em>"the Super Coolscan 8000 ED has a special "super fine" scan mode that uses only one of the three rows of pixels on its CCD line sensor. This supposedly reduces streaking in the image when extreme tonal adjustments are made to the image, apparently by eliminating the slight row-to-row differences between the CCD elements."</em></p>

<p>People complained about this on the LS-8000 quite a bit, and it was eliminated in the LS-9000. Imagine that, people actually complaining about banding in shadows of film scans!</p>

<p>More importantly, they fixed it. I see no banding whatsoever in LS-9000 scans.</p>

<p>So there's a fix. Albeit much easier perhaps on the LS-9000 since it's just a 3-line CCD. But both the LS-8000 & LS-9000 have 3-line CCDs, yet they fixed the problem.</p>

<p>This means fixing it must not be impossible right?</p>

<p>Anyone have any ideas how they fixed it on the LS-9000?<br>

-Rishi</p>

[rishij]

<p>Igor, thanks. Just out of curiosity, what method do you use to average the dark frames?</p>

<p>I understand subtraction methods using layers in Photoshop because I do this sometimes to remove variations in CCD response of a LS-5000 scanner.</p>

<p>I'd like to try it with the digital camera... I'm skeptical about whether or not it'll work though. Should be an interesting experiment though!</p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[steve_hovland]

<p>Basically, banding is the result of trying to capture a photon signal that is less than the electronic noise of the chip.<br>

Film probably handles this better.<br>

Consider trying fill flash 3 stops below ambient.</p>

[rishij]

<p>You mean that is less than the electronic noise/variation of the row/column amps. What you describe is just 'random noise', which can be easily removed by Neat Image.</p>

<p>Banding cannot. Not by Neat Image anyway.</p>

<p>Maybe I haven't seen this banding in shadows in one Nikon image to date because they figured out how to get rid of it on their LS-9000 scanner?</p>

<p>Just throwin' it out there. As is evidenced by the black dot problem, Canon needs more pixel-peepers on their team.</p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[igor_jarm]

<p>Rishi, like I said, I don't do any of this, except for occasional test. I do it the only way I know how, by sequentialy merging 50% transparent layers. That's why I merged 16 exposures: 16>8>4>2>1. I stopped at 16 because 32 would be far too much work for me :)</p>

[neil_fiertel]

<p>This is not banding..this is inherent in any ANY digital device and is the result of physics..gain in the sensor which is naturally necessary to raise the tiny voltage that results from a few photons striking the miniscule photosites. If one takes pictures with an appropriate exposure this effect is invisible. Changing the parameters by emphasizing either the gain in RAW or changing the frequency response of the sensor output by essentially tweaking the normal response of the sensor and amplification of signal is no different than turning up the treble on an audio amplifier ( remember them?) and in the latter case results in hiss from the equipment. We are dealing with physics here and the principles will never go away. Remember or learn for the first time...a CMOS or CCD sensor is an ANALOG device at the photosite. It is converted to digital signals as close to the sensor sites as possible but it starts out voltage dependent and thus there is always a noise component. What a camera company does to ameliorate such noise is unique to each manufacturer and averaging pixels is one way to deal with it as well as secret methodologies. Any digital camera that I have used will show patterning and chroma noise and that includes full frame or smaller sensors and naturaloy the smaller sensors have more noise in general OR lower resolution. Shooting pictures uisng very high ISO settings naturally are noisier unless one has noise reduction used in the exposure which does one of several things but one method is to average a black screen along with the exposure to eliminate electronic and pixel noise by subtraction ( reversing the signal and adding it to the exposed image). I produce as a standard print size..36inch prints from digital images on a daily basis..I do not have banding, I do not have noisy images after appropriate digital processing. I suggest that those that do, are not using their computer correctly in dealing with this technoloy. I have by the way made three foot prints even with the Canon G9 and believe me, I am a stickler for quality. It is all about knowing what you are doing in terms of exposure, minimal ISO, appropriate post processing and so forth. Sure, I can make that little camera show banding..I can also prevent it. On my Canon Dslrs I can also show banding but it requires more effort to ruin the image! The world of digital photography is an incredible improvement over film for me at least. Trying to get a three foot print from a 35mm medium ISO film was a miracle and rarely did it make the cut. I have a long memory for quality and today I am astounded at the quality of the best digital equipment. Surely Canon is in that rarified group of brilliant camera engineers and designers who make such state of the art cameras and lenses.</p>

[rishij]

<p>I read Canon's white paper on their CMOS sensors where they explain their noise removal technology for fixed pattern noise. Makes sense, but all this processing goes on (if I read it correctly) prior to gain application by the amplifiers.</p>

<p>Which, to me, points to the column (or row? I forget) amps being the source of the banding.</p>

<p>Neil, while I appreciate your explanation, I am still confused as to why I see it more on certain cameras and less on others. I just downloaded a bunch of Nikon samples at full resolution from DPREVEIW, upped the Fill Light to +100, and saw lots of random noise, sure (which can thankfully be removed by Neat Image), but no banding.<br>

<br /> This could just be the sampling that I chose, sure, because some Canon 5D Mark II samples also show no banding at +100 Fill Light; however, more often than not in the samples I've seen, I find it to be common.</p>

<p>I agree, the level of thought & engineering going into these digital systems is incredible, almost unfathomable. And that white paper only contained a part of the story, right? The resolution of the 5D MII is also incredible from preliminary tests... almost (maybe actually) matching the Sony A900. I imagine that once they fix the black dot problem, I'll probably be picking one up.</p>

<p>Still, I wonder how Nikon got rid of the banding on the LS-9000. The only way to get rid of it on the LS-8000 was to use 1-line CCD mode (not using the other 2 lines of the CCD).</p>

<p>Rishi</p>

[raj_dhaliwal]

<p>I had a similar problem with only one picture closeup with 5d mark II at ISO 3200. Its banding pattern was same as the one in this forum thread of the picture with the guy with wine bottles. I took the picture to another PC to post it in this forum and send it to canon. But I could not see any banding on the picture. took it back to the other PC, banding seen.<br>

I think we should also consider our monitors or video cards or drivers as a source of the banding. I am a new to canon equipment as well as this forum. Just a thought.<br>

Amar</p>

[rishij]

<p>Interesting that in Canon's statement, they mention the occurrence of vertical banding in sRAW1... and a potential coming fix:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9319-9824">http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9319-9824</a></p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[floyd_dean]

<p>Question, I am seeing white and blue drop outs in my frames after 1000 iso. Is this always there for everyone?</p>

[rishij]

<p>Floyd, mind posting some examples?</p>

[arturo_flores]

<p>I recently bought a Canon 5d markII, and sold my Nikon D300. After only 1 week taking test shot with 5DMII I noticed severe banding, especially in low light situation. I brought it back to Canon service and complained about this. I was told that they will make some adjustments. After I got it back and made some more test shots, I was very very disappointed to see the same problem. Now I am sorry I let go of my Nikon D300. I hope Canon people will take notice of my post. From what I have been reading in the thread there are a lot who are disappointed.</p>

[robert_mitchell6]

<p>This is what i'm getting from my 5dMKII using multiple lenses and numerous ISO/Aperture combinations:<br>

This particular shot was taken with a 35mm f/1.4L at f1.8, 1/160th, ISO 100<br>

<img src="http://www.robertmitchellphoto.com/robert/Full.png" alt="" /><br>

<img src="http://www.robertmitchellphoto.com/robert/100.png" alt="" /><br>

<img src="http://www.robertmitchellphoto.com/robert/300.png" alt="" /></p>

[joe_casey5]

<p>The shots at ISO 50 are disturbing but then again, let's get some storytelling composition here can we! The shots appear to be shot incorrect, poor light, wrong settings possibly. I can't believe these shots are from a 5D Mark II...</p>

[joe_casey5]

<p>Is this also to confirm, once and for all, that digital camera's are STILL not where the Hasselblad H2 with a film back is today? Digital's great for checking your shot in the field but if this is what I can look forward to when I want to blow up a great landscape shot... FORGET IT! Hopefully someone can play devil's advocate here. I really WANT to like the 5D Mark II enough to buy one.</p>

[julien_aubert]

<p>To Joe Casey<br>

I'm not sure you can say that - there are plenty of cameras that do much better than the 5dII for landscape. Juste google D3x, A900.</p>

[rishij]

<p>For the sake of posterity, I want to finally comment that while this was an interesting academic exercise, as many people have pointed out, this is not a real-world problem save for in:</p>

<ol>

<li>Huge dynamic range scenes</li>

<li>Exposure mistakes</li>

</ol>

<p>Not much point in commenting about (2) but as far as (1) is concerned, of course one should use:</p>

<ul>

<li>Graduated Neutral Density filters</li>

<li>Multiple exposures at different EV</li>

<li>Multiple exposures at same EV, then remove noise in shadows by pixel averaging</li>

</ul>

<p>Regarding my previous comments about film scans not showing such banding: I must admit that now, with much more experience with both mediums, the ability to pull detail out of shadows of clean film scans is offset by the lower signal:noise of the film, compared to good dSLRs, to begin with (Roger Clark shows that the signal:noise of Velvia 50 is about equivalent to somewhere between ISO800 & ISO1600 on a Canon 1D Mark II <a href="http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/digital.signal.to.noise/index.html">here</a>). Hence you're much more likely to have usable shadow detail in a low ISO digital capture than a Velvia 50 scan, especially given the generally accepted observation of the higher dynamic range of dSLRs compared to slide film.</p>

<p>One day I'd be curious to see if slide film could do better in the digital era with higher dynamic range scans of slide film, since so much shadow detail is lost because no scanner I've used can see all the detail in the shadows of Velvia (that you yourself can see with your naked eye & a bright light source). But that is for another discussion :)</p>

<p>I thank everyone for their valuable input on this thread! Funny how hindsight is 20/20. Or, er, 19/20 anyway... I mean you never know ;)</p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[rishij]

<p>And, to state the (maybe not so) obvious: different cameras/models probably exhibit this sort of banding or fixed pattern noise (correct me if I'm using that term incorrectly) to different degrees.</p>

<p>For example, here is the fixed pattern noise on my 5D, an average of 16 black exposures at ISO 1600, +4 exposure for viewing ease:<br>

<img src="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/5D-FixedPatternNoise_16ImageAverage.jpg" alt="" align="center" /><br>

<strong>Canon 5D Fixed Pattern Noise, ISO 1600, +4 exposure</strong></p>

<p>Here it is for my 5D Mark II; same procedure:<br>

<img src="http://rishisanyalphotography.com/ForumPostFiles/photo.net/5DMkII-FixedPatternNoise_16ImageAverage.jpg" alt="" align="center" /><br>

<strong>Canon 5D Mark II Fixed Pattern Noise, ISO 1600, +4 exposure</strong></p>

<p>The fixed pattern noise results above seem to indicate lower amounts for my 5D Mark II. Concordantly, in my experience with these two cameras in my hands, my 5D Mark II is more forgiving of Fill Light adjustments, resulting in rare appearances of banding, if ever. With shots from the 5D, I have seen it from time to time but, again, rarely. Both have well controlled noise floors.<br /><br />Furthermore, one might consider that the earlier production bodies had more problems, or whatever software was used for the conversions may have played a role.<br /><br />But the fact remains that I really only see this as a real-world issue when I try to push the shadows of huge dynamic range scenes shot with my 5D... and of course I remedy this issue by using grad ND filters, HDR, and/or my 5D Mark II, which really rarely ever shows this problem (consistent, again, with the above fixed pattern noise results, in my opinion).<br /><br />I'd imagine that your mileage may vary. My results here with my own cameras seem to be better than the posted shots at the beginning of this thread, even with heavy push processing.</p>

<p>-Rishi </p>