Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: KevinA on February 20, 2008, 02:51:56 pm
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I just shot some before sunrise and after sunset shots on a 1DsmkII and Kodak SLR/n at 6 iso, I bracketed a few stops when possible. Both showed banding in the sky with the transition from light to dark. Would a MF back of avoided this? Would those extra bits and larger sensors given me a smooth transition? All raw.
I'm wishing I'd shot on film at the moment it was -5 degrees C, I hate to think my early morning efforts have been spoilt by modern technology!
Exposures were quite a few seconds in each case, 60 secs with the Kodak, but it does have a special setting for this.
Kevin.
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Sounds like your monitor is not calibrated properly. I get shadow banding on my monitor sometimes and not on others' and mine is calbrated properly. So I'd check out the shot on a print or on another monitor.
The only other thing I can think of is that you underexposed the shot. Any modern digital camera from P&S all the way up to MFDB should be able to take a picture without any obvious banding.
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Yeah, it's most likely your monitor. Check it in print first.
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I just shot some before sunrise and after sunset shots on a 1DsmkII and Kodak SLR/n at 6 iso, I bracketed a few stops when possible. Both showed banding in the sky with the transition from light to dark. Would a MF back of avoided this? Would those extra bits and larger sensors given me a smooth transition? All raw.
I'm wishing I'd shot on film at the moment it was -5 degrees C, I hate to think my early morning efforts have been spoilt by modern technology!
Exposures were quite a few seconds in each case, 60 secs with the Kodak, but it does have a special setting for this.
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Contour banding is not caused by cameras, per se. It is caused by the converter and/or the dislpay device and its calibration. The converter may be using too much NR. 8-bit displays, unfortunately, can not show very slow gradients without contour banding in some ranges, unless noise is present in the image before it is quantized to 8 bits for the display.
16-bit processing will help, too.
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Contour banding is not caused by cameras, per se. It is caused by the converter and/or the dislpay device and its calibration. The converter may be using too much NR. 8-bit displays, unfortunately, can not show very slow gradients without contour banding in some ranges, unless noise is present in the image before it is quantized to 8 bits for the display.
16-bit processing will help, too.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176268\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I will recalibrate, I don't think it will go away though. You can clearly see it at different percentages on screen, I hope it is just the monitors.
Thanks,
Kevin.
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I just shot some before sunrise and after sunset shots on a 1DsmkII and Kodak SLR/n at 6 iso, I bracketed a few stops when possible. Both showed banding in the sky with the transition from light to dark. Would a MF back of avoided this? Would those extra bits and larger sensors given me a smooth transition? All raw.
I'm wishing I'd shot on film at the moment it was -5 degrees C, I hate to think my early morning efforts have been spoilt by modern technology!
Exposures were quite a few seconds in each case, 60 secs with the Kodak, but it does have a special setting for this.
Kevin.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176233\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Kevin:
A MF camera back would not show the banding because most of them are capturing at least 14 bits per color, Phase One P backs are capturing 16 bits per color. Any camera with more dynamic range will also produce smoother ramps which never show as bands of missing information.
Your Canon camera is a 12 bit capture device and will show banding more often when the light extends from one extreme to the other. For many years it was easy to duplicate this when comparing various MF manufactures backs to customers at the same time. You can duplicate this in the studio with one light on a background feathered off so you can see it start to focus and then fall off.
There are so many people that think because a manufacture states in the sales propaganda that their camera is 12 bit or 14 bit. Many early designed camera and camera backs were using analog to digital converters to reach the dynamic range that was stated. It was always easy to show this when comparing Phase One backs to Megavision. And comparing Leaf backs to Kodak Pro backs.
So all that hype about MF backs is true, you will find the tonal range is smoother because you are comparing 4,000 shades of color to 16,000 shades.
Get a demo today and see for yourself.
Chris Snipes
President
Image Production, Inc.
www.imageproduction.com
chris@imageproduction.com
Phase One Test Studio Florida
New, Used, and Demo Phase One Camera backs
Phase One Production Motorhome
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Kevin:
A MF camera back would not show the banding because most of them are capturing at least 14 bits per color, Phase One P backs are capturing 16 bits per color. Any camera with more dynamic range will also produce smoother ramps which never show as bands of missing information.
Your Canon camera is a 12 bit capture device and will show banding more often when the light extends from one extreme to the other. For many years it was easy to duplicate this when comparing various MF manufactures backs to customers at the same time. You can duplicate this in the studio with one light on a background feathered off so you can see it start to focus and then fall off.
There are so many people that think because a manufacture states in the sales propaganda that their camera is 12 bit or 14 bit. Many early designed camera and camera backs were using analog to digital converters to reach the dynamic range that was stated. It was always easy to show this when comparing Phase One backs to Megavision. And comparing Leaf backs to Kodak Pro backs.
So all that hype about MF backs is true, you will find the tonal range is smoother because you are comparing 4,000 shades of color to 16,000 shades.
Get a demo today and see for yourself.
Chris Snipes
President
Image Production, Inc.
www.imageproduction.com
chris@imageproduction.com
Phase One Test Studio Florida
New, Used, and Demo Phase One Camera backs
Phase One Production Motorhome
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=176475\")
I agree with you that a MF back capturing at 16bit should alleviate the issue at hand,but wanted to point out that 16bit is actually about 65k shades vs 12bit which is about 4k shades.
One thing also to check is that your monitor is set to millions of colors and not thousands.
Lance Schad
Capture Integration - Miami/Atlanta
305-394-3196 cell | 305-534-5702 office
[a href=\"http://www.captureintegration.com]Capture Integration , Phase One Dealer of the Year[/url]
lance@captureintegration.com
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... and it should be mentioned as well, that those 65k+ available grey shades with 16 bit A/D conversion is PER colour channel.
Best regards,
Thierry
I agree with you that a MF back capturing at 16bit should alleviate the issue at hand,but wanted to point out that 16bit is actually about 65k shades vs 12bit which is about 4k shades.
One thing also to check is that your monitor is set to millions of colors and not thousands.
Lance Schad
Capture Integration - Miami/Atlanta
305-394-3196 cell | 305-534-5702 office
Capture Integration , Phase One Dealer of the Year (http://www.captureintegration.com)
lance@captureintegration.com
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176479\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]