Vertical and horizontal banding (noise) at high ISO's

[puglover]

I am going thru some images from a low light shoot and I am discovering on some of them that were shot at high ISO's (800-1600) have some horizontal and vertical banding issues. I have two examples to post - the first one I did not sharpen in PS - the second one I did. The sharpness was turned off for both of these photos as I wanted to do all editing in PS. Both images were on the highest JPEG setting for the 12MP files... this image was shot at ISO 800, F 2.8, 1/180s - you can see a white line going thru his face close to his eyes...

[puglover]

Here is the second image - this one sharpened in PS, settings: 150, 1.8, 3... The banding is much more pronouced, this was shot at ISO 1600, F 1.7, 1/60s... any ideas - has anyone else experienced this problem?

[smunky]

I have that problem when i have the sharpness on at all in iso 1600 and also with weird lighting.
BTW. your second image looks like Chris Noth!

[puglover]

Does anyone else experience it? Is that 'normal' for the camera?

[smunky]

Btw: I think its better to use the PS USM at 49 .7
hope that helps/.

[Eddie the Gnat]

I have experienced this as well - it's quite annoying. It has cropped up when shooting under stage lighting, and is generally most visible in large areas of flat neutral tone. It looked much worse on my mate's iBook than on my LaCie, but I stopped worrying about it when I saw a 16"x12" print (Durst Epsilon/Fuji Crystal Archive) of one of the worst-affected shots on which the pattern was almost invisible.

The second pic looks a trifle over-sharpened, which can't help.

Hope this makes sense!

Eddie

[easternherp]

This problem can occur when shooting in artificial light and using JPEG settings. For this type of work you should try shooting in RAW and save the files as tiffs. You may get some patterning but a lot less.

[LinhLe]

Dear puglover

This is an extracted and resized from raw of 800 ISO
The only prpplem I got is the yellow cast for a dim light

Lính Lệ

[Tom Nolle]

It may be an artifact of the Fuji compression to JPG. Noise creates a problem in compression by generating extraneous detail. Since Fuji JPGs appear to be a pretty constant size, it's my guess that the camera is varying the compression level to normalize on a fixed file size. That will cause banding when a very low quality level is selected. You can prove this out yourself by shooting a RAW shot and then using Photoshop to compress it, first using low ASA with low noise and then with a higher ASA and noise.

Tom

[puglover]

But I was using the highest setting available for jpegs - 12MP fine...

[easternherp]

Plugover,

As I said in my earlier post, I think the problem is the use of JPEGS. It won't matter what level you choose as it is the compression algorithms that are used to compress the files that cause excessive noise. Try it out in raw to tiff then to JPEG and try one straight to jpeg.

[Tom Nolle]

I realize you're on the highest settiing, PugLover. The thing I'm thinking is the problem is that jpg file sizes vary depending on how high your quality setting is and how much detail variation there is in the shot. Fuji and other camera vendors seem to try to "normalize" file size so that the number of shots you get per gigabit is roughly the same. Since the detail in the image varies out of their control, they have to vary the quality setting to set a constant file size. When you compress an image a lot by setting low quality, you get banding.

Tom

[Alexander G.]

I have one major issue with image quality on high ISOs or underexposed images - i get very well visible striped patterns when cranking up the image a bit.

This happens from 200 to 800 ISO (i didn't use 1600 to now, but surely there, too) and is a real nuisance - i'd like to find out here with you if i have a defect sample of the camera or if this a "normal" design flaw in it.

Attached is a picture shot at 800ISO outdoor, cranked up overly to show the effect very clear - i'd be happy to post more of these images if a discussion develops. This is to be found in all images that even show slight underexposure.

Please some ppl reply there - i don't feel fit to call Fuji about it because i am sure they wouldn't understand that - and to send it away just to wait and see - i need the cam daily...

[puglover]

Looks like one of the many issues I deal with regularly....just shot another wedding with the S2 - once again, disappointed in almost all of the images. If you call Fuji, request a loaner and when you get it - then send in your camera... from what I can tell some people have bad issues with the camera and some don't - seemingly there are a lot of bad batches out there...and the camera tends to underexposure most of the time IMO - causing this noise...

[Alexander G.]

Thanks for a fast reply,

i'd have not too much of an issue if it tended to underexpose - many Nikonbased cams do that.
My major problem are the visible regular patterns - these are almost unretouchable without compromising quality. I'd be fine with noise - just noise - and not patterns.

Here's another example with an infrared filter used - that is one field where you intend to take "underexposed" pictures - and where the S2 is a major bummer. I at first thought this may be a problem with the moire-filter and IR-use - but now that i found it in almost every image i ask myself if this may be a design flaw?
(Please don't regard the centerspot, this was a lens test for IR-suitability and obviously this lens failed ;-) )

[puglover]

well, as you can see in the images i posted previously on this thread that i also have problems with 'patterned noise'...this has got to be design flaw IMO and i believe that Fuji just made a lot of mistakes when putting together this camera. Apparently it did some things right because so many people love it - but i, however am not one of those people :(

[Alexander G.]

Uaah, but it seems strange that i didn't fall over this when selecting the right camera for my use - so i still have hope for it to be fixed - else i wouldn't know what to do, there is no alternative on the Nikon-end of the pool, the D100 ist crap, SD9 sucks, too, the big Kodaks too expensive and not viable for my use - the S2 performs well in quite the most uses, just this is a major problem.
I'd bite it if i had to run and sell all my Nikon gear now just because i got mislead...

And i need to add, because the discussion in this thread earlier focused too much on the jpeg and sharpening issue :
I only shoot raw.
And the way of sharpening the images has nothing to do with the patterns. These come straight from the ccd...

[puglover]

Sorry that you are in the same boat as me, I feel mislead as well - I did a lot of research on the camera before purchasing...unfortunately I didn't run across this forum beforehand...

It is a CCD issue - the patterns are apparent in my RAW images and I always leave sharpness OFF - the jpegs do seem to be worse however...

[Alexander G.]

Wow, that's really a bummer.
Did you ever contact Fuji on this issue?

What is to do? Publish as many bad images as possible trying to build up pressure on Fuji? Won't help us now much ...

Dammit...
I suddenly feel very sad with the growing consciousness of having a sh*tload of money drowned in a pond ... :-(

[easternherp]

The images in this thread are quite bad. I would seriously consider taking the camera into Fuji for them to look at. I know you get noise at High ISO settings but these look really bad. I have shot pictures slightly underexposed and haven't seen this effect on my images.
CONTACT FUJI

[Alexander G.]

Thanks, that's what i did now.
One question - how do you guys get loaners from Fuji? Is there a difference in that to Fuji Germany? No loaner for me - really bad :-(((

I thought the feedback here should/would be much higher - so i try again with a little "you can try that at home"-quiz, i am still puzzled about this and not yet sure it's not a design flaw.

I'd be EXTREMELY interested in you doing the following:

Cap on. ISO800. 1/4000s - jpeg 1440 does it just for this - fire.

In Photoshop hit Ctrl-Shift-L (AutoLevels),
then Ctrl-L (Levels), pull the white down to 100.

Now you should have a nice noisy image.
What i would like to know is what you get there - is it just plain random noise or do you see a grid-like pattern?

The attached image is the result of exactly this action, resized to 800 horiz. and saved with save to web, quality 60.

Please guys, there's so many people on this forum, i just don't know any other people with S2's - this should be the greatest place for something like this - takes a maximum of 3 minutes of your time!

I want to have a better hand on when talking to Fuji again!

regards,
Alexander