Low Light Streaks - Is my camera faulty?

Banding will appear in all ISOs. It happens when your image is underexposed by more than about 2.7 stops.

The only reason it appears to happen more at higher ISOs is because usually people resort to higher ISOs when they're underexposing...
 
The problem is that the whole image doesn't have to be underexposed.

As long as there is a part of the frame that is under - even if the majority of the frame is over, banding happens.
 
Barry_Green said:
Banding will appear in all ISOs. It happens when your image is underexposed by more than about 2.7 stops.

The only reason it appears to happen more at higher ISOs is because usually people resort to higher ISOs when they're underexposing...
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Other day I shot in completely dark room that was lit by a computer monitor(19 inch LCD) using the stock lens. I just used a flash light to light the face of subject and shot it at ISO 100. There was no banding at all in the whole scene, but then someone told me that banding happens only when you are using high ISO!!!

I'm still to test the camera extensivly, but one thing is sure that if you have enough light then there is no such thing as banding.
 
There IS such a thing as banding - I'm shooting with enough light, and I'm STILL getting banding.

It's different from camera to camera. I happen to have one that's plagued with banding - even at proper exposures/ISOs.
 
I think it's clear my now that some GH1s have it, some don't.

We need to make a side by side test.
 
I don't really see how tis changes what Barry is saying? If you underexpose your footage there's going to be banding. That whole scene seems really poorly lit.
 
So everything I shoot on this camera has to be evenly lit across the entire frame all the time?

What happens when you're shooting a moody scene where your main character is exposed properly in one part of the frame, but your background is shadowy - this is what you get. Focal point in the frame is actually over-exposed and I let the background fall off where it may.

This is not lit (natural light) but the banding shouldn't be happening in this circumstance.
 
No what I'm saying is that if you had to use ISO 320 to bring the image up to even that level of brightness everything is too dark there, the stuffed animal, everything. If you increased the lighting everwhere, not evenly, just enough to get this same kind of exposure at ISO 100 without stopping down, then you will not have banding. The banding isn't caused by the ISO, the ISO just illustrates that your footage, even in the "over-exposed" areas is actually under exposed.
 
Gotcha.... And you're correct... :)

But that means, that the camera has a native speed of ISO 100 and that anything above that ISO is pushed...

I did shoot the same material at ISO 100 with a faster lens, and the banding went away... But that makes this an awfully slow camera when you don't want banding.

One should be able to expose for ISO 320 (or 200 for that matter) with no problems.
 
I shoot at ISO 400 all the time. It is possible to shoot in low-light conditions at a higher ISO. In my experience it works great for shooting outside at night, using faster glass, without problems. Most banding problems I've seen are when needing ISO to bring up light levels when shooting indoors, in places like a house, with large stretches of blank walls. The nice thing about these locations is that it's very easy to introduce more light, as apposed to shooting outside at night (where, from my experience, banding doesn't really seem to be much of an issue, because you're basically filming footage that is either properly exposed, or black, there's not much in between...I know this doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it's been my experience.)
 
I hear ya...

All I'm saying is that banding shouldn't be there no matter how you shoot. If I want to underexpose my scene, that's my right as a cinematographer. I'm not going to let a camera tell me how to light my shots.

That's all. I really like the GH1, but this is kind of a show-stopper for me personally.
 
Maybe you and I and the rest of the world have different definitions of low-light performance?

I just got done shooting (well I wasn't DP but I was a big part of the film...writer, AD, head of Post, etc :D) a film noir on the HVX, hardly known for it's low-light performance, and yeah, it was a *****. We had night shoots in the middle of fields where we had to use a couple of generators throw up around 6,000 watts of light just to get the characters lit. We shot in a parking lot where we had 3,000 watts doubling for a streetlight that was there, and we had a bar scene where we threw up at least 3,000 watts of light again. We also had daytime interiors where we were throwing up somewhere in the 3,000 watt range because we were using a DOF adapter. All of this for a film with very moody, low-key lighting, where most of the time the subjects were lit with a hard key light and very little fill, and the backgrounds barely got anything.

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I cannot tell you how much I wish I had the GH1 on that set. It's low light performance blows the HVX out of the water. So again, maybe we're thinking differently about what low-light is. To me, after using the HVX with an adapter (and without for several of the above scenes because we couldn't afford the light loss) an apartment, at night, with all the lights on, is a low-light situation. So is the same apartment, during the day, with a just a few windows open and most of the lights off. Could the GH1 with fast glass (but probably not with the stock lens) do well during this situations? Yeah.

Also you have to remember that the GH1's 100 ISO is more sensitive than you might typically expect from 100 ISO.
 
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I had an HVX with an adapter and I know the pain you felt! :)

I own a RED, which is not as light sensitive as a GH1 or 5D, but obviously, you can push RED very far in post to make it more sensitive. GH1 IS more sensitive, but getting banding on faces at dusk outdoors sucks. 5D is a miracle in low light and the only artifacts it produces is noise, but only at ridiculous ISOs.

Our definitions of low-light performance are probably the same, I just can't stand banding and I know that it's not from low light, but most likely a debayering or DSP issue. I'm used to seeing noise (even fixed pattern-type noise) when pushing cameras to their limit, but vertical fixed pattern line banding is a mistake not an excuse. :)
 
That's exactly my point though! "Low-light" changes based on what camera you have. I was on these sets and I've shot with the GH1 a ton and I can tell you that there is no way it would have banding in these situations, or with half the light we introduced here. The important thing is that we weren't trying to shoot a narrative film with natural lighting, indoor or outdoor. If you wouldn't do it on another camera, why do it on the GH1?

Oh and if you got look at the Red, 5D, Gh1 comparison video that's out there, I'd say the red looks pretty crummy at night in that video, it's sort of crumbling up everywhere, whereas the GH1 is getting a nice, pleasing grain.
 
Ben_B said:
That's exactly my point though! "Low-light" changes based on what camera you have. I was on these sets and I've shot with the GH1 a ton and I can tell you that there is no way it would have banding in these situations, or with half the light we introduced here. The important thing is that we weren't trying to shoot a narrative film with natural lighting, indoor or outdoor. If you wouldn't do it on another camera, why do it on the GH1?

Oh and if you got look at the Red, 5D, Gh1 comparison video that's out there, I'd say the red looks pretty crummy at night in that video, it's sort of crumbling up everywhere, whereas the GH1 is getting a nice, pleasing grain.
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I thought it looked crummy too, but it's all dependent on the speed of the lens you put on the RED and the post process. I've gotten way nicer looking natural night stuff on RED than what was in that comparison video. I think they shot with the 300mm prime - which is a nice lens, but opens to a 2.8. With low light and RED, you really need that extra stop or two - f2 or f1.4.

And I have shot natural light stuff on both RED and 5d that would cause my GH1 to band up. The aesthetic between a 'properly' lit narrative scene and natural 'docu-reality' style is obviously different. I can shoot and have shot those styles with no issues on other cameras (including the noisy HVX) but none of them produced banding when not shooting 'properly exposed' with additional lighting.

I probably have a camera that performs worse than yours because low-lighting is a no-go on mine.
 
My point is that for a narrative film I would never dream of using the HVX in a low-light situation without introducing lots of extra light, and that situations you might not normally expect to be are actually low-light situations...so why are people expecting to be able to do it with the GH1? Just because a camera can look like crap in low-light with no extra lighting and the GH1 looks crappier in the same situation doesn't mean that when you actually add light and do things properly that the GH1 won't look better or even do better with less light.
 
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