Has your 'banding' vanished?

S

sirk

Active member
Hey there,
just being curious about the banding problem the GH1 has (maybe had) in underexposed scenes (also known here as 'low light streaks').
Thing is, I already had two different GH1s from which I can report the same result:
First one I had suffered from banding which seemed to be gone after few days of shooting. I was highly annoyed from it initially but then was pretty surprised that it really did vanish.
I sent that GH1 back (due to issues of the plastic covering), well, and I got another one - which also had banding.
After people started to post things about 'burning the sensor' and nights with leaving the GH1 on I began to analyse banding once again.
I thought this second GH1 wouldn't be able to get rid of the problem, because it was still there after few weeks of usage.
Well, I shot much footage including very dark and underexposed stuff and archived many clips in iMovie.
Well as I browse through this footage recently I realized that I could pretty much tell that banding has vanished slowly but progressing on my device over the weeks/months.

What about you? Can you confirm what I experienced anyhow?
Anyone still out there with 'banding'?
 
How many weeks was your camera gone for fixage? Because the general consensus is that banding doesn't go away, shooters get used to avoiding it.

I personally haven't had much of a problem with it but I can make it when I want it, and did deal with it a little bit in a quick long take for a class I did...but I underexposed most of my dark footage enough that there was no banding...it makes it more visually interesting too.
 
Mine got better after about a day.

It never vanished though.

There was one theory that the banding is worse when the sensor is heated up over prolonged use.

Underexposing to black helps, but also overexposing plane surfaces helps too. Sometimes it's better to boost the ISO to 1600 to help with banding, as banding can occur no matter what the ISO on dimly lit surfaces.
 
I still have it. I shot something today at 400 iso, daytime, in my bedroom, with 2 40w kino bulbs next to my face and the fill side was banding. Pissed me off.
 
Ben_B said:
How many weeks was your camera gone for fixage? Because the general consensus is that banding doesn't go away, shooters get used to avoiding it.
Click to expand...

I got a entirely new camera and I guess that was early august (germany).
 
i'm almost amused at this "banding" issue because it seems that no matter what camera you have there's always going to be banding with underexposed images right? i've got the gh1 shot with proper iso and shutter and haven't seen "banding" yet. what's up? i hate to say this, but am I doing something wrong?
 
No matter what CMOS camera, yes. To varying degrees. But it's particularly bad on the GH1 in none-natural light, i.e. indoors, at night on the street.
 
Car3o said:
i've got the gh1 shot with proper iso and shutter and haven't seen "banding" yet. what's up? i hate to say this, but am I doing something wrong?
Click to expand...

It depends on a number of things. How you view the footage. What screen you use to view the footage. How bright the light was when you shot it. What the exposure was. If it's properly-to-overexposed pretty much the whole image you won't see any.
 
i've viewed it on a lcd screen, a crt and 2 computer monitors. none. i shot it at night in the city. also in a car. no banding. i mean, banding can also be in blue skies....so when people say banding, do they know what they're talking about when the say banding?

i think the majority of peoples banding are from the people who are thinking they if they have a 20watt light bulb and the kit lens the gh1 will magically work sans banding.
 
here's an example of how banding become and issue under extreme circumstances. this a grab from a 40w bulb at 200iso 1/30 shutter. another underexposed with a higher shutter speed.

ExposedProperly_354copy.png

Not_ExposedProperly_354copy.png
 
I tried the burn-in and it helped a little bit but there's still banding. However I just tend to avoid it by adding lights or avoiding underexposure as I can see in the LCD.

I am still using the 14-140 F4 Kit lens and is getting some adapters (cicieo7 and jinfiniance) soon which should help me a bit by being able to used fast lenses in low light situations.

But from what I heard even with fast lenses you can still get banding if it's underexposed.

Anyways, I also found that shooting in smooth mode and with all settings in -2 except for NR which is set to +2 helps a bit.
 
Ok thats nice to know, and I think a couple of people here can attest to this too. It's nice to have this topic as a follow up to the original banding thread. I hope Panasonic helps us a bit here, a little bit of everything will help. Banding or no banding, It is still an awesome camera,
Gh2 should be better ;)
 
Car3o said:
here's an example of how banding become and issue under extreme circumstances. this a grab from a 40w bulb at 200iso 1/30 shutter. another underexposed with a higher shutter speed.

ExposedProperly_354copy.png

Not_ExposedProperly_354copy.png
Click to expand...

Yeah uhh...I can't see anything wrong with these images. Aide from the fact that everything is blurry I mean :)
 
alright, a more in focus shot. iso 400, 1/30th shutter 50mm 1.4 wide open. 40w bulb in the back and two computer monitors about 5feet away from fan.

ExposedProperly_1704copy.png
 
Ben_B said:
How many weeks was your camera gone for fixage? Because the general consensus is that banding doesn't go away, shooters get used to avoiding it.

I personally haven't had much of a problem with it but I can make it when I want it, and did deal with it a little bit in a quick long take for a class I did...but I underexposed most of my dark footage enough that there was no banding...it makes it more visually interesting too.
Click to expand...

There's "banding" which is a quantization issue that is due to the 8Bit codec. Then there is the vertical streaks that is possibly a CMOS inherent issue. Which are we talking about?

If it's banding; you need you dither your footage like many I know did with HDCAM- DVCPRO HD etc would do to mask the issue.
 
Car3o said:
alright, a more in focus shot. iso 400, 1/30th shutter 50mm 1.4 wide open. 40w bulb in the back and two computer monitors about 5feet away from fan.

ExposedProperly_1704copy.png
Click to expand...


Yeah that's a quantization issue that is due to the 8Bit codec. Even HDCAM did that! These DSLR cmos cameras are to clean of a source for the limited 8bit codecs that are being used. It would be nice if we could induce a very subtle noise to help this issue a bit in the sensor or just before encoding. You need to dither your 8bit masters to minimize it; and then export to a 10bit codec for Post and archival.




Michael Pappas
http://www.pbase.com/Arrfilms
Arrfilms@hotmail.com
.
 
On Car3o's grabs, which look very nice by the way, what helps is the 1.4 lens.

I find that even if you have plenty of light and a low ISO, if you close down the lens or have a slow lens to start with like the kit lens at F4, you start to get banding. This is because the amount of light entering the lens does not produce a strong enough signal on the sensor, so the false signal from fixed pattern banding becomes more apparent, and after all the fancy words are said and done - more visible.

Can you test this theory Car3o? Try shooting at F4 with a higher ISO, giving the same brightness as the shots above and see what ya get. Maybe use the kit lens?

Also you will see it if you underexpose a little, by putting the shutter speed higher. Unless you have a magic camera :happy:
 
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