New A6000 issue

srtiwari

srtiwari

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Just picked up a new Sony a6000 at B&H this past weekend, and shot a few frames back here in Florida today.
The RAW files have this strange bright banding on most, but not all images. The JPEGs of the same are just fine.
Anyone know what causes this ? Is this a fixable issue, or should I just return the camera ?
Thanks for any advice...
 

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srtiwari said:
Yes the JPGs are fine.
Yes, I opened the files with Iridient, and they show the same banding.

However, when I look at the file directly on the SD card itself when mounted on my Desktop (Mac), it does not show the banding ! It only does that when in Lightroom or Iridient .

Here are links from my DropBox which will allow downloading the RAW files.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0napr18ocxk2j9/DSC00009.ARW?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8y8qku2kyx4uvh3/DSC00011.ARW?dl=0
Click to expand...

I just loaded the first one in Sony's own 'Image Data Converter'.. There are absolutely no artifacts. Converted it to jpg, and that's also fine..
 
pvdhaar said:
I just loaded the first one in Sony's own 'Image Data Converter'.. There are absolutely no artifacts. Converted it to jpg, and that's also fine..
Click to expand...
Also loaded and converted the second image.. Same story: no artifacts.

On a side note though.. You're shooting a combination of high iso (3200 for the chair, 1250 for the house) and underexposure (-1EV). Sony has a tendency to already marginally expose to avoid blowing out highlights. My experience is that running them at +1/3 to +2/3 EV at higher ISO gives files that give more data/depth to work with in post processing.
 

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srtiwari said:
Yes the JPGs are fine.
Yes, I opened the files with Iridient, and they show the same banding.

However, when I look at the file directly on the SD card itself when mounted on my Desktop (Mac), it does not show the banding ! It only does that when in Lightroom or Iridient .

Here are links from my DropBox which will allow downloading the RAW files.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0napr18ocxk2j9/DSC00009.ARW?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8y8qku2kyx4uvh3/DSC00011.ARW?dl=0
Click to expand...

checked with CC and latest version of ACR. All good.
 
I've heard about this before (in fact, here's the thread) and I don't think anyone has really come up with a root cause, although conjecture includes hardware issues during file transfer or the way Lightroom compresses RAW files or ???.

Only consensus seems to be: it's not the camera.
 
I have just tried with Rawtherapee, and with Faststone Image Viewer, and no sign of the problem.
I also tried it in Sony IDC (as did pvdhaar), and no problem there either.
 
Thank you all for the feedback !
Further..
I put the same SD card, with the original images still on it, into a different reader, and reimported them into Lightroom, and also Iridient, and they were just fine.
It would seem to point to the SD card reader as the culprit.
The files were not damaged/corrupted.
 
pvdhaar said:
Also loaded and converted the second image.. Same story: no artifacts.

On a side note though.. You're shooting a combination of high iso (3200 for the chair, 1250 for the house) and underexposure (-1EV). Sony has a tendency to already marginally expose to avoid blowing out highlights. My experience is that running them at +1/3 to +2/3 EV at higher ISO gives files that give more data/depth to work with in post processing.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the side note Peter.
I am forced to use high ISO in low light, and use -.7 to -2.0 to generate an image that duplicates the low light, rather than it showing up as bright daylight. Is there a better way to do this ?
Subhash
 
srtiwari said:
Thanks for the side note Peter.
I am forced to use high ISO in low light, and use -.7 to -2.0 to generate an image that duplicates the low light, rather than it showing up as bright daylight. Is there a better way to do this ?
Subhash
Click to expand...
There is.. In short: don't underexpose during capture. Dial down the brightness only afterwards in post processing to make the image resemble the scene you saw.

This way you retain much more shadow detail. What you're now doing is the opposite.. the exposure is so thin, that you have no good differentiation between light levels in the shadows, and these now come out mushy and can't be recovered. Moreover, there are no highlights to preserve, so there's no need to underexpose.

Instead of not underexposing at all, you can even go a bit further and overexpose if the highlights don't get blown out. This method is called 'expose to the right' and explained extensively on the web (e.g. Google on ETTR)..

If you really need to create the image in camera, there's a free app that you can install on the a6000 (Photo Retouch) that allows you to change the brightness and contrast of a jpeg image that you've captured. You'll get better results shooting jpeg with the ETTR method and dialing down brightness than with underexposed high ISO RAW and trying to recover detail that isn't there..
 
pvdhaar said:
There is.. In short: don't underexpose during capture. Dial down the brightness only afterwards in post processing to make the image resemble the scene you saw.

This way you retain much more shadow detail. What you're now doing is the opposite.. the exposure is so thin, that you have no good differentiation between light levels in the shadows, and these now come out mushy and can't be recovered. Moreover, there are no highlights to preserve, so there's no need to underexpose.

Instead of not underexposing at all, you can even go a bit further and overexpose if the highlights don't get blown out. This method is called 'expose to the right' and explained extensively on the web (e.g. Google on ETTR)..

If you really need to create the image in camera, there's a free app that you can install on the a6000 (Photo Retouch) that allows you to change the brightness and contrast of a jpeg image that you've captured. You'll get better results shooting jpeg with the ETTR method and dialing down brightness than with underexposed high ISO RAW and trying to recover detail that isn't there..
Click to expand...

Thank you for that. I'm going to try it.
-Subhash
 
Oh, Oh ! Problem NOT solved.
I had thought it was the Card reader, but now another Card reader (which I have used in the past without problems) has the same issue. And yet, the desktop view of the contents of the card look just fine !
Could someone using Lightroom please try this file and see if it has the same problem ? That would implicate the software's RAW conversion...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0napr18oc...00009.ARW?dl=0
 
I, too, opened the first raw file with no problem (Lightroom and Apple Preview, both on Mac). Tried, but cannot download the file linked in #15 (gives 404 error, not found). So, back to the first files:

It's not the file, and therefore not the camera.

It's not the file, so whatever you used to get the file onto Dropbox is also OK.

That leaves your computer, or more specifically, your computer while running software. Test memory? Reinstall software? This is a thorny one. Please let us know what happens!
 
Further...
1. It only occurs in Lightroom, although I thought I saw it once in Iridient. Never happened again !
2. Reimporting into Lightroom sometimes does not replicate the problem.
2. Happens with, both, Fuji and Sony RAW files.
3. The Bands are always parallel to the longer side - upright in Portrait mode and horizontal in Landscape, and only cover about half the image.
4. It is inconsistent- sometimes 2 RAW images can be side by side, but only one shows the banding.

It looks like it may be something Lightroom does to the files at the time of importing. Actually, I can see the banding on the thumbnails window in Lightroom just after importing. Since I don't change anything from defaults, I have no idea what causes this !?
 
srtiwari said:
Oh, Oh ! Problem NOT solved.
I had thought it was the Card reader, but now another Card reader (which I have used in the past without problems) has the same issue.
Click to expand...
If reading the images from the card sometimes fails and sometimes not, then the card is (intermittently) failing. Best to throw it away, and get a new one; this one is near end of life.

Intermittent reader failure of flash cards indicates that the flash memory cells are only written marginally, so that read-out success depends on temperature and supply voltage drop..
 
I highly doubt a Lightroom bug. It might be a bad installation, but I'm betting it's interaction with other software or a hardware problem.

I suggest:
- Reinstall Lightroom
- Have your computer checked out
 
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