I noticed this strange color banding in some of my recent interior real estate shots and am wondering if you guys knew what it is or why it is there. Look at the ceiling.
Shot with D3, 14-24 f2.8 and the SB800.
The first shot is the jpg made from the raw file right out of the camera, the second is the same shot cropped with the saturation cranked up so the banding is more noticable. Didnt seem to matter if the raw file was converted with Photoshop, Lightroom or Nikon NX.
Not sure, but, could this be caused by ambient light, maybe from outside? I'd re-shoot with blinds closed. This doesn't look like banding to me. I've never seen it curved and that wide.
James R wrote:
Looking at it again, I'm wondering if the lighting fixture might be the culprit.
I am seeing this in other rooms without the fixture. There is another shot I took wihout the flash and did notice the color bands where the light from a window coming in and hitting the ceiling.
Still doesnt explain what it is and why it is happening.
"portions of the original image that presented gradual transitions are replaced by abrupt changes in shading and gradation from one area of tone to another"
and
"Unwanted posterization, also known as banding, may occur when the color depth, sometimes called bit depth, is insufficient to accurately sample a continuous gradation of color tone. As a result, a continuous gradient appears as a series of discrete steps or bands of color — hence the name".
my bet is that it is one color channel in the ceiling (of course not entirely, but dominating the pixel detail will be one channel), and it is lit by primarily tungsten, which will underexpose a cameras meter, and since you are already trying to hold highlights, you are leaving the ceiling to an exposure of somewhere around "zone 3" about 20 percent on the histogram.
This area has a small amount of detail recorded compared to the highlights (see linear vs. non linear recording), and thus has few shades to use, creating, again, posterizing. Don't know what I would do about it, probably sub the lighting in the chandelier with daylight type lighting.
patrickphoto wrote:
digital, not optical. It is posterization.
"portions of the original image that presented gradual transitions are replaced by abrupt changes in shading and gradation from one area of tone to another"
and
"Unwanted posterization, also known as banding, may occur when the color depth, sometimes called bit depth, is insufficient to accurately sample a continuous gradation of color tone. As a result, a continuous gradient appears as a series of discrete steps or bands of color — hence the name".
patrickphoto wrote:
my bet is that it is one color channel in the ceiling (of course not entirely, but dominating the pixel detail will be one channel), and it is lit by primarily tungsten, which will underexpose a cameras meter, and since you are already trying to hold highlights, you are leaving the ceiling to an exposure of somewhere around "zone 3" about 20 percent on the histogram.
This area has a small amount of detail recorded compared to the highlights (see linear vs. non linear recording), and thus has few shades to use, creating, again, posterizing. Don't know what I would do about it, probably sub the lighting in the chandelier with daylight type lighting....Show more →
I tried duplicating this in another environment with no incandescant lighting just the flash with the same results.
Is this showing up on your RAW file? If not, it may simply be a result of JPEG compression - especially a posted one that may further compress your JPEG. I don't know how much the FM site compresses images that are posted.
