I can't vouch for Nikon, but I know that some farm equipment manufactuers send prototypes around to an area for perusal. John Deere has done it in our area, quite disreetly I may add. A select group of us used the big baler under field conditions and then provided feedback. Not all of our critcisms were corrected, probably too costly or deemed nonessential by the design team. However a few major complaints were addressed. Two models have emerged since we used the prototype, but I still feel that Hesston has a much better baler in design and reliability. So much for our input.

What this shows is that major companies are concerned about their products acceptance in the marketplace, but not every nit until it becomes a common occurence. With Nikon, I feel that this banding issue is something that slipped by, hopefully only to select bodies. As with the D70 dying with a green blinking light I am confident that Nikon will offer a fix at no cost to the owner.

Well, in case you folks were curious, I've decided to send my new toy back to B&H for a refund. They DID say that they'd replace it with a shipment that's due next week, however, I'm going to be away when it arrives, and will probably just re-order at a later date.

The character at Nikon said he'd send me an e-mail with instructions on how to send them an image, and that they'd look at the image "within 24 hours". Though I don't have an extreme complaint about that, I still don't consider it to be very responsive. Additionally, he said he'd e-mail me within "a few minutes" and that was more than 30 minutes ago. Perhaps they think $1700 is piddly, pocket change type of expense.

Gerald

chemprof wrote:
Well, in case you folks were curious, I've decided to send my new toy back to B&H for a refund. They DID say that they'd replace it with a shipment that's due next week, however, I'm going to be away when it arrives, and will probably just re-order at a later date.

The character at Nikon said he'd send me an e-mail with instructions on how to send them an image, and that they'd look at the image "within 24 hours". Though I don't have an extreme complaint about that, I still don't consider it to be very responsive. Additionally, he said he'd e-mail me within "a few minutes" and that was more than 30 minutes ago. Perhaps they think $1700 is piddly, pocket change type of expense.

Gerald

Sorry Gerald but I don't see what the complaint is about Nikon. What do you want them to do? Do you expect them to take your word for it that your camera is making lousy images? So they can't get back to you within a few minutes. So what if it takes them a couple of hours or a couple of days. Things don't always go as planned. A whole thirty minutes has passed and they haven't called so you are on the net announcing your disapproval. Have some patients. Hang in there. Try to endure your hardship a little bit longer.

grmedhat1 wrote:
chemprof wrote:
Well, in case you folks were curious, I've decided to send my new toy back to B&H for a refund. They DID say that they'd replace it with a shipment that's due next week, however, I'm going to be away when it arrives, and will probably just re-order at a later date.

The character at Nikon said he'd send me an e-mail with instructions on how to send them an image, and that they'd look at the image "within 24 hours". Though I don't have an extreme complaint about that, I still don't consider it to be very responsive. Additionally, he said he'd e-mail me within "a few minutes" and that was more than 30 minutes ago. Perhaps they think $1700 is piddly, pocket change type of expense.

Gerald

Sorry Gerald but I don't see what the complaint is about Nikon. What do you want them to do? Do you expect them to take your word for it that your camera is making lousy images? So they can't get back to you within a few minutes. So what if it takes them a couple of hours or a couple of days. Things don't always go as planned. A whole thirty minutes has passed and they haven't called so you are on the net announcing your disapproval. Have some patients. Hang in there. Try to endure your hardship a little bit longer.




Now it's been an hour since he said he'd e-mail me in "a few minutes", and still no e-mail. I know other people have had better luck than this. It may be isolated. It really seems like these folks could look at a web posted image while on the phone. Wouldnt't take as long as the camera reset even did...

Gerald

As I said, things don't always go as planned. Put yourself in his shoes. Perhaps the guy got called away by his supervisor or multitude of other things. Perhaps a couple of co-workers called in sick and everyone else has to pick up the slack. There's really no need to announce to the world Nikon considers your complaint as piddly and not worthy of immediate response. Sorry to hear about the problem but glad to hear B&H is replacing it. Sounds like good service to me.

I have experienced no such banding in my images. For those experiencing banding, what software are you using to process the raw images. Are you shooting raw?

Here is one image from my camera of a sunset yesterday. I opened it with Nikon Capture Editor 4.4 and then sent it to PhotoShop CS2 in 16-bit mode. I made no changes in CS2 except to resize / smart sharpen for JPG output.

The EXIF data is still in the image file in case you want to inspect it.

Ignore the aesthetic quality of the image. I was interested in seeing how it handled the sunset sky. Very smooth gradation and rich colors. I gave a very tiny color boost in Capture. Otherwise, the image is as I took it.



Here is the NEF of anyone is interested: D200sunset.nef.

Edited by Walter Rowe on Dec 22, 2005 at 01:47 PM GMT

Walter, your image looks great. Aesthetically as well!!! Looks like you were luckier than I and your camera has no problems. My workflow was the same as yours. Banding was apparent from 66% zoom on up in NC 4.4, Quite noticable at 100%. Sharpening makes it worse, and zooming past 100% (200 or 300% for example) makes it even more visible. If your image - specifically, your sky in the image you posted - looks smooth at 300%, I'd say you probably don't have the problem that I did.

Gerald

New word I invented DISMALITY- (diz-mal-it-tee) a anti-virtue found on the dark side. No known cure. No sense getting upset over another electronic bug.

A) Give the darn camera to 20 trusted shooters for a few weeks , then get together and sort thru the issues, it would Have to be cheaper than all the returns etc and frustrations and loss of face of doing it this way.

I agree with John, bugs should be removed before eating anything. -BUT- Imagine the screaming and yelling the folks here and on other sites would promulgate if the camera got here twenty days late, the bitching and moaning would be unbearable. It would turn into "Nikon this and Nikon that". and sooner or later "I'm switching to Canon". Just let them sort this out.

B) Also twenty cameras isn't enough for a baseline check on production considering the numbers go into the hundreds of thousands and usage and all the types of shooters couldn't possibly correlate to the particular anomoly. In the matrix mode the camera alone compares to 30,000 presets or something like that.


You don't think they do this already?
I go with AJ on this one, they have been field testing but this is not the anomoly you normally see. The users are out there taking the beautiful shots that would hide most of these type things.

And if they did have bad shots, no one would ever hear or see them. You never see the ugly shots used for an auto printer demo do you. Or you never see the BAD wedding shots here when someone throws up "I just shot my first wedding" and posts three winners and the glad boys do the back pats. Show me the 1200 throwouts and some throw-ups that don't make it. Not the 3 good overdone Photoshop ones. Luck can play into anything. We could have one bad sensor out of how many.

I think some post production might give us some idea as to what the problem area might be if we had some files. Again the post production might have some answers. And printing might tell us something.

A few D200's came into the store and I'll could of taken one but I have learned that patience is not only a virtue, it's a de-bugged virtue. I have enough toys to play with and guaranteed so does everyone else judging from those lists of gear some of you sign out with. I can and will wait till this gets sorted out. In the meantime I sent a few remarks to a contact.

Let us not over-react, let it play out, even the D2H repair and the repair for the D70 resulted in a better product and the D2H has one of the strongest repair backups in the industry. They'll sort it out.

Gerald - I don't want to say that you don't have a "problem camera", but you've acknowledged that you have a buggy NC4.4 installation. Don't you want to rule out software problems (ie - flaky RAW conversion) before sending the body back?

Do you see the "corduroy" on the LCD screen at super-duper magnification? How about JPEGs opened directly in Photoshop? The sample you posted was significantly underexposed - how does a well-exposed shot look?

Before sending the body back to B&H, I'd verify that the problem still exists when you take NC4.4 completely out of the flow.

JM2¢,
Mike

MikeLandry wrote:
Gerald - I don't want to say that you don't have a "problem camera", but you've acknowledged that you have a buggy NC4.4 installation. Don't you want to rule out software problems (ie - flaky RAW conversion) before sending the body back?

Do you see the "corduroy" on the LCD screen at super-duper magnification? How about JPEGs opened directly in Photoshop? The sample you posted was significantly underexposed - how does a well-exposed shot look?

Before sending the body back to B&H, I'd verify that the problem still exists when you take NC4.4 completely out of the flow.

JM2¢,
Mike

Mike, thanks for your concern, but if your re-read my post, it was just a human error on my part. I generally DO NOT have any problems with NC, (nor with PS) for that matter, I just never make jpg's, and had used too high a compression. I do not have software problems - I have in the last few days processed and printed more than a dozen large images (12x18in) with outstanding results from my D100. I NEVER get a corduroy effect on my D100 in my images, never vertical bands of any kind. There is no way that this would be acceptable. If I sharpened for printing the effect would be even more pronounced. The images are unusable. The camera is in the box and going back to B&H, and I'll repurchase once this shakes out. By the way, Nikon has still not e-mailed me. Believe me, I have processed plenty of images to know what a good (or even just acceptable) file is. These files are worse than anything I've ever seen out of the D100 I've been using for 2 years, and the D70 my wife has had for the last year and a half.

I DO also agree that I feel good about Nikon as a company, and also feel good that they WILL, in the END make good. I think at this point, that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, as with many large companies. This is also an indication that this is NOT likely to be a hugely pervasive issue, IMHO. We would have seen more posts like mine, otherwise.

Gerald

If the images out of the camara are worse than your existing D100 and D70, then maybe it is a bad camera. It happens...

I edited my post to add a link to the NEF file in case anyone wants to inspect it more closely.

I've experienced the banding too. Like Adam, I've found it to be random. After a day of trying to pin it down I gave up and returned the camera to my dealer, who's agreed to exchange it when their next batch of D200s arrives.

These have been my experiences:

- the banding affects perhaps 10% of images
- it's noticeable in mid-tones and shadow areas, but in affected images not all mid-tones or shadows are necessarily affected
- it occurs from ISO 100 upwards (although I didn't check beyond 400)
- it's only noticeable in RAW images (I processed in Capture 4.4.1). JPEGs written to the card at the same time don't display the banding, although this may be because of compression artefacts

It seems that other people have experienced far more severe and noticeable banding; equally, if I'd been a jpeg only shooter I would probably never have noticed it. I don't know anything about manufacturing or electronics, but it seems to me that this could be some kind of manufacturing glitch that wasn't picked up in prototype and pre-production testing. Nikon's manufacturing must be churning out D200s at full tilt and, although I'm sure they have great QC in place there's room for the unforeseen in even the best operations.

I'm just hoping my replacement, when it arrives, will be OK!

SebRogers wrote:
I've experienced the banding too. Like Adam, I've found it to be random. After a day of trying to pin it down I gave up and returned the camera to my dealer, who's agreed to exchange it when their next batch of D200s arrives.

These have been my experiences:

- the banding affects perhaps 10% of images
- it's noticeable in mid-tones and shadow areas, but in affected images not all mid-tones or shadows are necessarily affected
- it occurs from ISO 100 upwards (although I didn't check beyond 400)
- it's only noticeable in RAW images (I processed in Capture 4.4.1). JPEGs written to the card at the same time don't display the banding, although this may be because of compression artefacts

It seems that other people have experienced far more severe and noticeable banding; equally, if I'd been a jpeg only shooter I would probably never have noticed it. I don't know anything about manufacturing or electronics, but it seems to me that this could be some kind of manufacturing glitch that wasn't picked up in prototype and pre-production testing. Nikon's manufacturing must be churning out D200s at full tilt and, although I'm sure they have great QC in place there's room for the unforeseen in even the best operations.

I'm just hoping my replacement, when it arrives, will be OK!



On my camera you could see the banding in EVERY image, if you knew where to look for it. At 10% images almost looked like newsprint. It was not as visible in the "normal" jpg's from the camera, but still possible to see, again, if you knew what to look for. Hope you get your new camera soon. Let us know how it works out.

As for mine, it's on its way back to B&H for a refund. I will probably rebuy after the holidays - not home enough now to be here to accept a replacement.

Gerald

Ge

Bah this is really troubling! I hope a firmware can fix this!

I have to echo Al and Seb.

It doesn't matter how much pre production testing is done, how many production models used in the field the percentage will always be minimal in comparison to a full porduction run. The odds of identifying a limited glitch or intermittent problem is not very good.

I am not surprised at all, in fact I would say I expected something and it will be remedied in due course.

This is just another example of why I never buy any industrial product anymore during the first few weeks of production. This is inevitable and related to the complexity of the product. In this particular case, there seems to be a number of similar problems (just looked at other forums), so this could be a hardware problem (meaning replacement) or firmware (could be solved with an upgrade).

Anyway, all serious manufacturers (and Nikon is one of them) are aware of those risks and will handle those issues professionally on the longer term (cf D2H, D70...).

Gerald, I wouldn't worry too much, the problem will be handled and I am pretty sure you will get another copy you will be happy with...but I totally understand your frustration, this is not a funny experience to say the least...

I just now checked my images in Capture...I shoot in 100% RAW and I am not seeing banding at least at 100% mag. I see a little noise at ISO 200, but nothing the likes of your image above.

I hope you can get this addressed to your satisfaction.

This is why I have two very expensive bodies...Murphy's Law I also have two cars.... two dogs well, you get the idea.

Terry

I forgot to mention...

As well as returning the camera to my dealer, I contacted Nikon about it. Despite sounding surprised and claiming it was the first they'd heard of a banding problem (I wouldn't expect them to say anything else, to be honest), their response after I sent them a sample NEF file was very quick. Within an hour of the file being sent to Nikon Europe I'd been emailed by Nikon UK to the effect that 'there may possibly be a problem with your camera. With this in mind I would suggest that you send the camera to us directly so that we can have an engineer to asses (sic) the problem.'

This sounds to me like the response of a company that has identified and acknowledged a problem and is working hard to locate the cause. Whilst waiting around for my brand new body to be repaired isn't a thrilling prospect (I politely declined and pointed out that my dealer would be supplying me with a new one; the faulty one will be making its way back to Nikon service anyway), it makes perfect sense for Nikon to call in as many of the banding-afflicted samples as possible.

My hunch is that, from a production point of view, it's a problem that will go away pretty quickly.

Just bought my D200 2 days ago and checked all my images. Thanks goodness there's no banding in any of them. Colors and saturation are excellent. Love it and it's comparable to the D2X quality.

Alec www.photo.net/photos/alecee

SebRogers wrote:
I forgot to mention...

As well as returning the camera to my dealer, I contacted Nikon about it. Despite sounding surprised and claiming it was the first they'd heard of a banding problem (I wouldn't expect them to say anything else, to be honest), their response after I sent them a sample NEF file was very quick. Within an hour of the file being sent to Nikon Europe I'd been emailed by Nikon UK to the effect that 'there may possibly be a problem with your camera. With this in mind I would suggest that you send the camera to us directly so that we can have an engineer to asses (sic) the problem.'

This sounds to me like the response of a company that has identified and acknowledged a problem and is working hard to locate the cause. Whilst waiting around for my brand new body to be repaired isn't a thrilling prospect (I politely declined and pointed out that my dealer would be supplying me with a new one; the faulty one will be making its way back to Nikon service anyway), it makes perfect sense for Nikon to call in as many of the banding-afflicted samples as possible.

My hunch is that, from a production point of view, it's a problem that will go away pretty quickly.

This is fantastic news. This is the response I expected from Nikon. The tech I spoke to must have been an exception. I'm really glad to hear it. Gives me my confidence back.

I also expect the problem will go away quickly, and that the camera will be top notch. I think we are VERY early in the production cycle.

Incidentally, I NEVER received the promised response back via e-mail, so never got to send my NEF at all. I may have to follow up on that... I think it still matters because I intend to repurchase the camera after the holidays.

Gerald

chemprof wrote:
rocketpop wrote:
Wow... That image looks like corduroy


Not exactly what I had in mind when I bought the camera!

Gerald


Thank you for posting this. I immediately looked at the few test images I took ... and lo and behold I got it. It does look like corduroy. What a bummer. I am in the process of returning it to Ritz.

If anyone can provide a full rez JPEG with observable banding, I will test an algorthm to remove banding "automagically".

Rico


please start a new thread so folks will get the message , it would be cool if you fixed this


J

Nikon should use you guys as final product reviewers. . Tough crowd!!!

JohnG

Edited by johnnymg on Dec 24, 2005 at 03:18 AM GMT