Roses and Banding?

[Alpha_7]

I thought I'd post two of my midnight rose shots, a series I did walking around my grandparents property in the dead of night with the sb-800 blinding myself and everything else.

When I went to upload one of the shots I found a lot of banding / type noise, just wondering if this is normal or a result of a dodgey raw conversion or what ? Other then that, do you like my rose shots ?






Edit : Dammit on this LCD the banding is as obvious and the second shot looks much to dark....Grrrrrr!

[Gordon]

I prefer the 2nd one Craig. The texture of the petals shows up more clearly, they are a bit close to saturation on the first one for my liking.

The banding is always present I think, it is at very low levels so only shows in dark areas with low signal/noise ratio. It is usually less apparent at ISO 200, but does appear there quite often in astrophotos with low background levels.
It isnt related to RAW conversions, its quite obvious on RAW images too.
I suspect it is some sort of readout noise, and is random, not repeating frame to frame, so cant be subtracted.

Gordon

[Raskill]

Just to throw a spanner in the works, I like the first one as it is brighter and the colours are more saturated. Guess it's a personal choice thing.

I can't make out any banding on my monitor, but that might be because my eyes are tired.

[avkomp]

supposed to be banding on the d200 also!!
havent had my hands on one yet though

steve

[Michael]

Craig

It looks like the kind of banding you see when you bump the EV comp up a little too high in capture.

if you didn't bump it up at all then perhaps I'd start to worry.

[PALL]

i like ths first one beautiful rose but it still needs improvement.the second one is dull looking as its underexposed.you need to exprement around with white balance that can also improve.try to take flower shots in available light usualy overcast weather with bright soft light from clouds.no matter how good flash is its still can't be like natural real light.

[leek]

Craig,

Your images may be underexposed because the subject is in the shadow of the lens... I had this problem a lot when taking flower images with the 105mm macro...

To solve this, you either need to get the flash off the camera hot-shoe and use commander mode, or use a lightsphere...

[Nikon boy]

Craig, the first shot does it for me i can;t see any banding in either shot on my screen although the second image is a little darker,
I have seen banding on prints when i have mucked up exposure really badly or resaved a jpeg too many times
I really like you attitude to trying something different i.e. going out at night into the garden with the camera and flash must try it , although my neighbours may worry even more about me !!! and my camera

[stubbsy]

Craig. No banding here either. Maybe it was what you were drinking/smoking at the time

So far as the images I prefer #1 since #2 is way too dark (nothing some judicious PP couldn't fix).

[sirhc55]

Craig - #2, although needing some exposure compensation, is the far better shot. There is more crisp detail in #2 over #1. If shot in RAW play a little with #2 and you will have a winner

[greencardigan]

Yes, I can see some banding. I get it sometimes in under exposed macro shots.

Nice shots otherwise.

[PiroStitch]

I can see the banding in the first photo, yet it's my pick out of the two as the rose is more correctly exposed than the second one. Probably need to increase the brightness a bit to bring the roses out in the second pic.

I'm not going to say anything about the banding as I have my theory as to why it came up, but it's probably wrong

[Slider]

Craig, banding in the first shot is evident. I sometimes get teh same thing in underexposed shots.

The second does seem a bit dark but I suspect if you to brighten it up teh banding would show up there too.

Having said that, they are still very nice roses