Low Light Streaks - Is my camera faulty?

My feelings are the same. I left Canon 5D II and do not regret at all.
GH1 still has more positive aspects. I am collecting lenses which I will use with GH2 or how it will be named.

Anyway, everybody has free will. For sure Canon is good too!
 
I just feel the need to post this somewhere, and this thread seems like the place.

Just this morning when I turned my GH1 on to shoot some video (in the same conditions I always do, with the same settings), I was noticing some pretty severe banding. I thought the most widely accepted remedy was it going away over time… but now many months of use later, and I suddenly have a banding issue on my PAL model GH1 with the latest firmware(s). I haven't decided what to do yet. I'll give it another day before contacting Panasonic. This is the camera I work with every day, so this is unacceptable and very frustrating, to say the least.
 
Hi,

I'm going to be shooting a short with minmal lighting a 24mm 2.8 FD lens.
And ISO's up to 400.
It is going to be quite dark, and on purpose underexposed.

A lot of blacks and blues, I'm I going to get this kind of noise? And how could I avoid it?
 
Hello everyone. Are these low light streaks visible on the GF1? Have anyone had the opportunity to use a 14-140 stock lens on a GH1 and a GF1?
 
Oetam said:
Hi,

I'm going to be shooting a short with minmal lighting a 24mm 2.8 FD lens.
And ISO's up to 400.
It is going to be quite dark, and on purpose underexposed.

A lot of blacks and blues, I'm I going to get this kind of noise? And how could I avoid it?
Click to expand...

I find that the 'banding' is very un-noticeable at ISOs of less than 400, even in the dark. If you are still underexposing though, either get a faster lens, or add a bit more light to the scene. Ramping up ISO to 800 and above does tend to mean seeing banding in very dark areas in your scene.
 
I would swear that when I got my GH1, the banding was incredibly bad. The bands were purple, yellow and blue both vertical and horizontal, with the horizontals being the worst. They seemed to originate from the bottom right corner of the picture/video.

The first thing I did when I got this camera was go to creative mode and setup everything manually. Pointed at a light gray wall, ISO 200/400, 1024 w/50shutter, 50mmF1.4, the banding was horrendous. I mean totally unusable. I would swear that the camera was broken. And yes, histogram and meter confirmed proper exposure.

I took it out and did some day shots, noticing the banding all over the place even in broad daylight.

I've been using it off and on for about 2.5 weeks now and I can say that the COLORED bands have greatly diminished. The purple, yellow and blue bands are almost completely gone at this point, leaving only the faint blinking and black bands even at 1600ISO now.

So I think there are TWO different sets of bands people are seeing. Most folks are posting pics of the black banding I've been seeing but I never see pics/vids of the horrible color bands that I've seen and read about. Those seem to be the ones that go away with time.

So being a skeptic of the "burn-in" as well, I placed my camera in front of the gray wall from hell(just too easy to get banding on it for some reason) and set it for maximum banding. I let it sit for 12 hours while I slept.

I would swear I see a slight difference.

I know it's implausible, I'm an EE and I don't believe in "burn-in" for any solid state devices but I'd swear that at ISO1600, things look better. :undecided

Maybe it's not "burn-in" at all, maybe there is some routine in the NR system that "adapts" over time? Maybe it needs to sample larger periods of time to work out the NR?
 
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yeah, having shot with my camera every day for a month while travelling i can actually see the shots gradually losing the banding over time. The early stuff i did inside has very noticeable banding at ISO500 and higher, but by the end of the trip i can see only very small amounts of banding at ISO1600..
 
Vertical crap solved!

Vertical crap solved!

Hi everyone,
solved but not completly. If you bad light condition it's batter get higher ISO then lower. If you use 800 ISO you get better image oposite you choosen 100 or 200. One more notice. AVCHD is better quality in low light condition than MJPEG. Everythink is only compromise:(
 
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Does anybody knows if the new GH2 will have this issue as well? If they fixed it, there will be a horde selling their GH1's on ebay to upgrade, including myself
 
There has been no announcement by Panasonic that there even will *be* a GH2, so no, nobody can know whether there will be any differences in any supposed GH2.

Of course, we all think there will be a GH2, but I'm just pointing out that the company has never announced any such product, nor shown it, nor described any features or improvements to it, so nobody knows anything about it.
 
....and I wouldn't exactly call banding an "issue" with the camera. Compare footage with the GH1 shot with the 20mm f1.7 at ISO 1600 and footage shot with your favorite prosumer camcorder with the gain cranked up to full blast...then decide which camera has an "issue."


Besides, beta testing with the GH2 ended three months ago...I've already had to send my test model back to Panasonic while they do final production runs before the big official release coming next month. But I CAN tell you this...I'm trying to buy another GH1 off eBay...a RED one.
 
Saw some deer in my back garden today - got the kit lens out to look at them.... pretty disappointing.

Ok - not the best light... but it wasn't THAT dark. The exposure seemed to be OK on the in camera guide when I put the ISO up to 400.

Can i just check... is this banding noise... not the fixed patten noise that I hear about?

And how would you pros deal with this... is having a faster lens my only solution (obviously I can't light deer any better!)

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I AGREE
 
That's exactly the reason why you see a lot of wildlife shooters with 300f2.8's and 600f4's

I made the investment in fast Nikon glass years ago. Thought I would never use it after I stopped shooting stills. Kind of glad I hung on them all these years.
 
n8ture said:
That's exactly the reason why you see a lot of wildlife shooters with 300f2.8's and 600f4's

I made the investment in fast Nikon glass years ago. Thought I would never use it after I stopped shooting stills. Kind of glad I hung on them all these years.
Click to expand...

Yeah well - i am pretty dissapointed... it didn't seem that dark to me and they were only about 100-150ft away... I thought shooting in these conditions would be a no brainer when i shelled out a grand on this camera! :cheesy:

I am on the lookout for a good lens for surf footage - but wildlife stuff would also be part of its remit - are you saying that 300 / 400 primes is the way to go? Any particular reason to choose Nikon over others? I would prefer a zoom at those kind of focal lengths but not sure where to go with that?
 
swyzlstyx said:
...


Besides, beta testing with the GH2 ended three months ago...I've already had to send my test model back to Panasonic while they do final production runs before the big official release coming next month. But I CAN tell you this...I'm trying to buy another GH1 off eBay...a RED one.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you where not impressed with the GH2 you where lucky enough to test.
 
the doc said:
I am on the lookout for a good lens for surf footage - but wildlife stuff would also be part of its remit - are you saying that 300 / 400 primes is the way to go?
Click to expand...
This is the fast auto-focus zoom that does it all for me:

http://www.four-thirds.org/en/fourthirds/standard.html#14-54f2

If you want to stay within ISO 400 at dawn or dusk, you definitely need f3.5 or better. I sold my Lumix 14-140mm kit lens on Ebay for $500 and haven't had a single regret.
 
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