Sorry to revive this, but I didn't want to start another thread to ask this.
How can I avoid the banding, with or without the hack? should I not go over a certain ISO, or what? Do we know what causes it? I know it was a mystery as to what caused this, but I'm wondering if anyone knows why it's happening and how to avoid it by now.
to avoid FPN don't underexpose more than 2.5 stops. To avoid the gain banding don't go above about 800 ISO(and still avoid underexposing more than 3 stops).