Sony A7R II Banding Issues

[GTPhoto]

Hi
I recently needed to rent a Sony A7RII for a shoot I was doing for a client in South Africa. I needed a camera that is capable of shooting in silent mode as I was shooting a wedding for a advertising campaign. As a professional I duly tested the camera before the shoot under similar conditions and found banding while shooting on both silent mode and a high ISO. After speaking to the rental house I was told this seemed to be caused by the fluorescent flicker in the lights in my office, as I was not shooting on fluorescent I thought nothing more of it  - I went ahead and after the shoot was horrified to find the banding had happened on all the imagery shot under mixed lighting conditions, due to the short battery life I had switched off the iris and back review monitors. BIG MISTAKE !!!
Sony has pulled out of South Africa and claim the camera I rented was faulty - We conducted another teat with a A7 and the same A7R II they both display banding shot whilst using silent mode.
I have closely followed Michael's reviews on this camera and would appreciate any explanation and comment form Sony
as Sony UK don't seem to want to admit this fault. A reshoot has cost me thousands of dollars - poor show SONY !!!!
Kind Regards
Gerard

[AlterEgo]

Hi
I recently needed to rent a Sony A7RII for a shoot I was doing for a client in South Africa. I needed a camera that is capable of shooting in silent mode as I was shooting a wedding for a advertising campaign. As a professional I duly tested the camera before the shoot under similar conditions and found banding while shooting on both silent mode and a high ISO. After speaking to the rental house I was told this seemed to be caused by the fluorescent flicker in the lights in my office, as I was not shooting on fluorescent I thought nothing more of it  - I went ahead and after the shoot was horrified to find the banding had happened on all the imagery shot under mixed lighting conditions, due to the short battery life I had switched off the iris and back review monitors. BIG MISTAKE !!!
Sony has pulled out of South Africa and claim the camera I rented was faulty - We conducted another teat with a A7 and the same A7R II they both display banding shot whilst using silent mode.
I have closely followed Michael's reviews on this camera and would appreciate any explanation and comment form Sony
as Sony UK don't seem to want to admit this fault. A reshoot has cost me thousands of dollars - poor show SONY !!!!
Kind Regards
Gerard

and why do you expect a rolling shutter when the whole frame is exposed (line by line sensels-wise) in 1/20-1/30s not to have problems with certain lightning ?

[pegelli]

This is a well documented effect when using silent shutter and 50/60 Hz light and shorter exposure times.

Either disable silent shutter or use longer shutter times to avoid it.

[razrblck]

Exactly. Silent shutter means electronic first curtain, and the way it works is basically the same as in video mode: the camera is pulling the data from the sensor channel by channel (each channel is made up of X lines on the sensor), so you do get a rolling shutter effect. This drawback should be explained clearly in the manual.

[pegelli]

Exactly. Silent shutter means electronic first curtain

and electronic second curtain (not the right technical term, but you get the gist, no physical shutter curtains used at all in Silent mode).
Using EFCS by itself (with a physical 2nd shutter curtain)is much faster and doesn't create this effect.

[mcbroomf]

Hi
I recently needed to rent a Sony A7RII for a shoot I was doing for a client in South Africa. I needed a camera that is capable of shooting in silent mode as I was shooting a wedding for a advertising campaign. As a professional I duly tested the camera before the shoot under similar conditions and found banding while shooting on both silent mode and a high ISO. After speaking to the rental house I was told this seemed to be caused by the fluorescent flicker in the lights in my office, as I was not shooting on fluorescent I thought nothing more of it  - I went ahead and after the shoot was horrified to find the banding had happened on all the imagery shot under mixed lighting conditions, due to the short battery life I had switched off the iris and back review monitors. BIG MISTAKE !!!
Sony has pulled out of South Africa and claim the camera I rented was faulty - We conducted another teat with a A7 and the same A7R II they both display banding shot whilst using silent mode.
I have closely followed Michael's reviews on this camera and would appreciate any explanation and comment form Sony
as Sony UK don't seem to want to admit this fault. A reshoot has cost me thousands of dollars - poor show SONY !!!!
Kind Regards
Gerard

I can understand how horrified you must have been when you got back from the shoot.  This is obviously too late but Sony has this to say about Silent Shooting in their Help guide...

"If you shoot images under instantaneous lightning or flickering lights, such as
the flash light from other cameras or fluorescent lighting, a striping effect may
occur on the image."

[scooby70]

This happens with my GX7 too and for all I know with other cameras too.

Sorry, but anyone shooting in silent mode should have considered the possibility of this and adjusted settings accordingly.

[Telecaster]

I don't know about "should have considered"…but after it happens to you once you're not likely to let it happen again! Back in the 1990s I spent a couple days at my then workplace taking documentary pics for a brochure, using a Contax IIa rangefinder with 35 & 50mm lenses and color neg film. After getting the film developed I discovered many of the pics had been spoiled by the same sort of tonal banding seen by this thread's OP. Caused, of course, by interference between the building's flourescent room lighting and the speed of the camera's vertical-travel shutter. I salvaged what I could but also had to snap away for a couple more days.

Here's a banding example taken with the Panasonic GX8 using the electronic shutter. LED lighting, a Cree bulb, in this case.

-Dave-

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Silent shutter is full electronic readout. It is rather slowish. In EFCS the first curtain is electronic, just resetting the sensor, but the second one is a physical curtain, moving at normal speed.

Best regards
Erik

and electronic second curtain (not the right technical term, but you get the gist, no physical shutter curtains used at all in Silent mode).
Using EFCS by itself (with a physical 2nd shutter curtain)is much faster and doesn't create this effect.