Pls offer your tips to avoid banding on M8 high ISO

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noimmunity

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Hey folks, I've returned to Taipei after a harrowing attempted move to Shanghai, and I'm now teaching at the Taipei National University of the Arts. Great to be back in Taipei, and I look forward to following RF more often.

I have an M8 that I enjoy using, the only major point of real dissatisfaction being the banding that will crop up on shots at iso above 640. The banding occurs primarily in areas that are very poorly and unevenly lit. In other words, simply cranking up the ISO to take shots in an evenly well lit area will not produce the banding effect.

Noise is one thing, and I can live with it. But banding is unacceptable, and prevents me from using the M8 at ISO settings above 640 for the most part.

FWIW, Mine is a very late model M8 classic, part of a limited series released after the M8.2 and just months before the M9. I do not find it suffers from the other problems associated with M8 sensors.

I've read a lot about how some people have success using the M8 at higher ISOs, but I've never seen the banding issue directly addressed. There is this kind of mantra that gets repeated all the time, "expose properly", but the banding will occur in some situations even when I bracket the exposure. So, I would love to hear some tips on how to avoid banding, beyond the obvious don't-set-the-ISO-above-640 tip that is my current strategy.
 
Don't underexpose. That is difficult if the contrast range is high as you still need to stop your highlights blowing out, but essentially thats it. If you take a more creative view there is nothing to say that your shadows need detail in them if you don't want detail in them, so in post processing burn them in to disguise banding or increase the black point etc. Beef them up in other words. And don't get trapped by extreme expectations of 'perfect' exposure, there is no such thing in dingy rooms and bad lighting, its always going to be a compromise, but clearly banding is unsightly.

Steve
 
My M8 is still under warranty, it's recent. I did see some banding too at the higher ISO's. Not like the early issues reported for M8's but, similar to other digital cameras when poorly exposed, it's there on the M8 at normal exposures. I do see it in shadows and the advice from 250swb is typically how I fix it, but harder to fix is that I often see it spread across large medium intensity areas and essentially the photo is ruined. I see this at 1250 and 2500. Is this just something we have to live with or anyone else see the problem, not necessarily in the shadows?
 
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My M8 at ISO 2500, Nikkor 8.5cm F2, wide-open.

After they dimmed the lights, ~1/30th second, F2, ISO 2500.

I'm happy with the high ISO performance.

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In camera JPEG, resized using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. NO Photoshop or post-processing for noise reduction.

Uncoated 5cm F1.5 Sonnar.

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Considering the wild-lighting, the color balance is quite good. Lots of UV for glow-in-the-dark stuff.

I'm having the best luck with older, lower contrast lenses that tend to preserve shadow detail on film cameras. The uncoated 5cm F1.5 Sonnar is my favorite M8 lens so far. This Nikkor 8.5cm F2 is doing quite well.
 
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Just shoot a " full histogram" If you have to shift it to the right to close the gap you are in noise and banding territory.
 
Brian, I wouldn't expect banding under the lighting conditions in that arena, for the most part. The other nice thing about the Nikkor 85 is that it matches the 75 framelines (except at MFD).

Jaap, it seems like from your description that there are certain situations in which banding will be unavoidable if one wants to keep exposure times short enough to photograph living people without blur (such as in a city park at night or a pub).
 
I use the Nikkor 8.5cm with the 75 framelines, and the 10.5cm with the 90 framelines- has not failed me yet!

Another ISO 2500 shot, some Photoshop using "curves" to clip noise, same as I do in Kodacolor 800 shots.

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Focus is on the Dessert, of course. Canon 50/1.2, wide-open, 1/10th second or so, candlelight.

On banding: could you put up some of your problem shots?
 
noimmunity said:
Brian, I wouldn't expect banding under the lighting conditions in that arena, for the most part. The other nice thing about the Nikkor 85 is that it matches the 75 framelines (except at MFD).

Jaap, it seems like from your description that there are certain situations in which banding will be unavoidable if one wants to keep exposure times short enough to photograph living people without blur (such as in a city park at night or a pub).
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True, but in that case you are simply underexposing. Or you lack a Noctilux....:p
 
"back in the day" of early custom made sensors, we did custom software that got rid of banding. "Non-Uniformity Correction". Some hot pixels on the detector were known, and the values they produced be brought down to the rest of the image. With all the image processing software available these days, such as noise-ninja, do any offer the capability to map bad pixels and image bands out?
 
The best way to combat it now is to go into LAB color and shift the black point in the luminosity channel. That will block up the shadows a bit,but the color channels will still provide some detail.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
"back in the day" of early custom made sensors, we did custom software that got rid of banding. "Non-Uniformity Correction". Some hot pixels on the detector were known, and the values they produced be brought down to the rest of the image. With all the image processing software available these days, such as noise-ninja, do any offer the capability to map bad pixels and image bands out?
Click to expand...

I'll bump this... a good question!!!
 
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