Canon - dynamic range / banding. Future?

There's no such thing as "expose correctly" only "expose as the photographer intended."

Not quite; "correct" exposure is when all of the exposure fits on the straight line portion of the characteristic curve - and that depends not only on the exposure but also on the scene - on a dull day a landscape etc may easily fit onto that portion whereas a on very contrasty day it may not.

If it does not then either the highlights will be clipped or the shadows compressed.

Which is one of the reasons we use HDR - to avoid either extremes.

And as a point, just because the A/D converter is 14 bits doesn't mean that the DR of the sensor is - in fact most sensors struggle to reach 10 or 11 EV.
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But if John ArtyMcFarty wants to clip shadows or blow hilights, who are we to tell him he "needs to go and learn to expose correctly"?
 
This is a 100% crop with shadow clipping warnings enabled. Since the sensor received no light the image on the left should be a solid blue tone. All the non blue parts have some sort of signal, all of which was fabricated by the sensor and associated electronics..

Just because a sensor is receiving no light doesn't mean that there are no outputs from the photodiodes - there will always be an output unless you lower the electronics to absolute zero.

Almost any electronic circuitry above absolute zero will generate a random signal because of heat (called thermal noise).

And there is also "shot" noise from the sensor which is amplified by the electronics:

http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/

http://photo.stackexchange.com/ques...ignificant-source-of-noise-for-typical-photog

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q="shot"+noise+from+the+sensor&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

All of these different sorts of random signal combine to produce what we call noise.

And that is what you are seeing.
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But if John ArtyMcFarty wants to clip shadows or blow hilights, who are we to tell him he "needs to go and learn to expose correctly"?

Because that is the meaning of help on this forum - after all if I wanted to be picky I could highlight your minor spelling mistakes could I not?
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Yes, and Canon sensors produce this noise at higher levels and in ugly striped patterns, which other manufacturers' sensors do not. Until Canon can at least banish the pattern noise they will be behind the curve.
 
Yes, and Canon sensors produce this noise at higher levels and in ugly striped patterns, which other manufacturers' sensors do not. Until Canon can at least banish the pattern noise they will be behind the curve.

Well I have owned 3 Canon cameras and consider they produce perfectly good pictures without worrying about esoteric forms of noise when much more important to me is resolution, DR etc.

And since this noise has never shown up on my photographs I can't really worry about it.
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Because that is the meaning of help on this forum - after all if I wanted to be picky I could highlight your minor spelling mistakes could I not?
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Photography is an artistic endeavour where there is no fundamental right and wrong, just preference. However, spelling is meant to follow an agreed standard so criticise away on my typing skills!

There's a difference between help in the sense of "Have you consider this as a better way to achieve your aim?" and the "You're opinions don't count because you need learn how to exposure correctly" response that invariably seems to meet requests for less shadow noise from canon sensors. (FWIW, shadow noise isn't something that bothers me so I'm not vested in that particular argument.)
 
Photography is an artistic endeavour where there is no fundamental right and wrong, just preference. However, spelling is meant to follow an agreed standard so criticise away on my typing skills!

There's a difference between help in the sense of "Have you consider this as a better way to achieve your aim?" and the "You're opinions don't count because you need learn how to exposure correctly" response that invariably seems to meet requests for less shadow noise from canon sensors. (FWIW, shadow noise isn't something that bothers me so I'm not vested in that particular argument.)

In this case Tim wasn't asking for help to solve or alleviate the problem but stated "Since the sensor received no light the image on the left should be a solid blue tone" which was not correct for the reasons I stated.
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I think something else may be going on here because if the "banding" (not the right term to apply to this) was this bad the camera would be almost unusable.

And I certainly wouldn't expect to see this at 100 ISO - I regularly use between 800-3200 on my 1Ds MkII and have never seen this even at 100% crop.
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This isn't a problem. It's people expecting to pull up shadow detail that would otherwise be to almost black and expect to have no noise in it.

They want to take this....
4FVOm5n.jpg


...and be able to have the shadow detail in the porch look like this..
4etXpcB.jpg


...and not have any noise in the shadows.

A) Why?... it looks sh*t and B) No camera can do this with a single exposure without a trade off in noise.

Sure the D800 is better.... but if you stopped trying to banish shadows from all your images, maybe it won't be a problem. Even with the D800, IF I wanted to lighten those shadows I;d still probably take a second exposure a stop over, and compine them in PS.

This is still caused by unrealistic expectations in processing.
 
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If there are some blue areas then why should they not all be blue? In any case, this is not my thread and not my fight. I was just trying to illustrate why the noise pattern is referred to as banding. I shall bow out now.
 
It is easy to use shadows as an example. But, for those that say it is crazy to attempt to extract information from shadows - it is not all about shadows. It's about being able to process images that have high contrast. Yes, for landscapes you can use HDR to get round this, but for other disciplines e.g. weddings, this is simply not possible.

Interestingly, last night I watched an interview with Ross Harvey. He describes exactly what has been discussed in this thread and points out (in his opinion) how the Nikon D3 is way ahead with regards to noise and what I (and many others) label as banding.

BTW I'm not Canon bashing. I shoot Canon. I am however being realistic!
 
Well I took a pic with the lens cap on and got this:

[URL=http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/photos/small-noise.7016/]
Small Noise
by petersmart on Talk Photography[/URL]

But since my photos taken with this camera show nothing of this in ordinary pics (even shadows) I won't worry about it:) or take any pics with my lens cap on.

On the plus side if you magnify the noise right up and then cut out a section and then magnify that you get these nice patterns:


Pattern
by petersmart on Talk Photography


Noise pic
by petersmart on Talk Photography

So, always a silver lining;)
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Yes, shadows can cause a bit of a pain with 5d3.
Anyone with 1 DX here? Is the flagship clean(er)? I would really hope so.
Having both then I can say with all certainly that it's cleaner (or more forgiving....depends to what you attribute the problem)
Whether this is due to better use of technology or simply that there are far fewer pixels of a larger size....who knows. Was the reduction from the 22Mp of the 1Ds3 to the 18Mp of the 1Dx promulgated by signal noise issues or is the improved performance just a consequential effect and the reduction in resolution was driven by some other factor such as processing requirements at 14fps.

Bob
 
So this is really a thread on mega pixel peeping, i suppose you can find faults in anything if you look hard enough :thinking:
 
If you think that, you have completely missed the point.

In this bizarre Canon fan boy world it's just not an issue and if it is you're an idiot. The fact that other manufacturers products either don't display the issue or display it to a lesser extent is neither here nor there in Canon fan boy land. It's just not an issue and if it is you're a fool who doesn't know anything about exposure.

Best bet is to never start threads like this (and Canon fanboys aren't the only fan boys) as you wont get any helpful discussion, all you'll get is denial, abuse and grief.
 
A
In this bizarre Canon fan boy world it's just not an issue and if it is you're an idiot. The fact that other manufacturers products either don't display the issue or display it to a lesser extent is neither here nor there in Canon fan boy land. It's just not an issue and if it is you're a fool who doesn't know anything about exposure.

Best bet is to never start threads like this (and Canon fanboys aren't the only fan boys) as you wont get any helpful discussion, all you'll get is denial, abuse and grief.

Alan why don't you try and contribute something useful to the thread instead of sarcastic pointless posts. It's boring reading them and you're spoiling an interesting topic.
 
Gary, I do see your point. But Alan is understandably frustrated that many members on here will either respond to a thread before even understanding the issue, or as he says just play the 'Canon Fan Boy Song'. As I've said already, I shoot Canon and I realise that there is still an issue with Canon kit. OK it is not enough for me to switch to Nikon, but it is there.
 
AAlan why don't you try and contribute something useful to the thread instead of sarcastic pointless posts. It's boring reading them and you're spoiling an interesting topic.

Gary,

I had decided not to participate in this thread again but as you've aimed a comment at me by name... Reading posts like yours adds even less than mine and to be honest you just look like yet another fan boy trying to silence anything you perceive as criticism of Canon products or even worse just elicit a bite. But if that's your scene man... then jog on.

I've sold all my Canon gear but I still have a bit of a soft spot just as I do for Nikon as that's what I used before I went digital and I'd like to see them both do well and move the gear forward to so serve us as customers and users more. I therefore see no useful purpose is denying an issue that's been widely reported by many people and even less useful purpose in writing the issue off as cack handed exposure or processing.

And back to the OP...

With the release of the 7D2, it will be interesting to see if any work has been done to increase the dynamic range.
The 5D3 suffers from banding - and the 5D2 even more so. So, is this something that Canon are actively trying to improve?

Gary, there's little room for doubt that Canon lag behind the competition in that their cameras have a lower dynamic range and that some of their products display nasty banding in some situations. I hope that Canon have caught or even bettered the competition in terms of DR and I hope that their products are now competitive noise wise too.

Positive enough for you?
 
Gary, I do see your point. But Alan is understandably frustrated that many members on here will either respond to a thread before even understanding the issue, or as he says just play the 'Canon Fan Boy Song'. As I've said already, I shoot Canon and I realise that there is still an issue with Canon kit. OK it is not enough for me to switch to Nikon, but it is there.

I'm a photography fan and I'm also a technology fan and to be honest I don't tend not to suffer fools or bullies gladly, sometimes, so unfortunately threads like this tend to be a perfect storm to me as, as far as I can see, there's an issue with the technology as Canon kit doesn't seem to be as "good" as the competition and also there seems to be an element of denial/blame the user.

I didn't intend to be negative or sarcastic and I do apologise if I've spoilt the enjoyment of the thread but in my defence this thread did seem to start to go in the wrong direction (blaming uses for poor exposure and processing) pretty quickly and before my fingers hit the keys :D

Yes, exposure is a part of the equation but there are occasions when a decision has to be made to either expose more for the highlights or more for the shadows and taking the multi shot/HDR route isn't always possible. Yes, PP is a part of the equation but faced with the previous choice of bias towards highlights or shadows something's gotta give and something is going to have to be altered in PP and the evidence seems to be that better results can be had with, for example, Nikon products than Canon products.

Alluding to people being poor photographers just doesn't seem to be very useful, but there you go :D
 
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