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Leica M10 Yellow Banding


Foto Freak

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My Leica M10 has shown some form of horizontal yellow banding when shot at ISOs 800 and above with the aperture set at 1.4. The area on the image where the yellow banding occurs is variable; sometimes it is there and sometimes not. These images are JPEG straight out of the camera. I have also noticed that the yellow band disappears when I stop down. Changing the White balance had no effect.  Anyone have similar problems?

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Edited by Foto Freak
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I'm guessing its the refresh rate of fluorescent lights doing that to your image

 

Hi guys, yeah the photos were shot indoors at night in fluorescent light. I am not sure if this is a problem specific to my M10 or if other digital bodies will have similar problems.

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Just to expand a bit - with a focal-plane shutter, at any speed faster than the sync speed, only part of the film or sensor is uncovered at any one instant. If you have a strobing light source, the light will pulse on and off as the shutter slit moves from the top to bottom or side to side of the image area, leaving bands.

 

If it is a "real" strobe - electronic on-camera or studio flash - you'll get one skinny area exposed. If it is pulsing fast enough to appear continuous, as with 50/60 hz fluorescent tubes or some other sources, you'll get a sine-wave light/dark/light/dark pattern. The yellow color is because the pulses do change in color temperature as the voltage across the LED or fluorescing gas also rises and falls - the light-emitting material is actually changing temperature and thus spectral output (as well as brightness) 50-60 times a second.

 

I haven't been in such lighting yet with the M10, but with the M9 and other cameras, 1/250-1/1000 shutter speeds are the "ugly spot" where it shows up most often. At the sync speed or longer speeds (180th or slower) the whole image area gets the same lighting, and at really fast speeds you can sometimes "beat the reaper" and get an even exposure in between pulses, catching a peak or trough in the sine wave. Which is why it shows up some times and not others.

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  • 1 month later...

Looks like there is something wrong with the JPEG engine. 

 

Here is a screen capture of the same high ISO shot (JPEG+DNG) in LR (no PP). The DNG version is perfectly fine.

 

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And the problem is not restricted to some form of banding. The orange part of the tent is wrongly displayed as bright yellow in the following shot:

 

 

 

 

Jean-Pierre

 

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Well, what settings are you using for the "jpeg engine"? You do have controls in the camera for setting jpeg Contrast, Saturation, Sharpening, Noise reduction. And the first two will both change color brightness and saturation, depending on the light. etc. How did you set the white-balance, especially for the first pair of pictures?

 

Which color profile are you using in LightRoom for "developing" .DNGs? A .jpg created in the camera will always use Leica's own "M10" profile - if you are using the Adobe profile for the M10 in your computer, naturally the color interpretation may be different - redder or greener yellows, purpler or more cyan skies, more or less saturation for specific primary colors, etc.

 

A .DNG (or any raw capture) tends to start out like color negative film (thus Adobe's name for the format: Digital NeGative) - lower contrast, lower saturation, not a "finished" picture until you make the adjustments you desire in your computer, just as a darkroom worker would adjust contrast with filters in an enlarger. A jpg is more like slide film - contrast and saturation and sharpening "baked" right into the picture by the camera at the moment of exposure.

 

White Balance is also "baked into" a jpg, whereas the WB can be changed by the user with a .DNG in their computer. Your first picture .jpg simply looks like the camera picked one WB (processed with the camera's Maestro processor and Leica's software) - while the .DNG has been processed with your own Intel processor and Adobe software and whatever WB you chose.)

 

There is no reason whatsoever to expect a .jpg and a .DNG image - straight from the camera - to look exactly the same. Any more than you would expect a Fujichrome slide, and a print from a Fuji 400H color negative, to look exactly the same.

Edited by adan
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Well, what settings are you using for the "jpeg engine"? You do have controls in the camera for setting jpeg Contrast, Saturation, Sharpening, Noise reduction. And the first two will both change color brightness and saturation, depending on the light. etc. How did you set the white-balance, especially for the first pair of pictures?

All set to default aka "medium".

WB auto. Tungsten and fluorescent gives worse results.

 

Default settings in LR. No WB modification.

 

And, by the way, it is not a WB problem. Using a color picker, it is easy to check that shades of white are quite the same: for example the beard of the wizard, the sleeve of his assistant.

 

You are talking about subtleties in color rendering and that is clearly not the problem here. There is a huge alteration that is clearly visible:

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@Jean-Pierre, what is your "Camera Calibration" Settings @ your Lightroom?

I'm using "Leica M10" and the DNG is similar to the Jpeg from the camera

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Edited by stefanusj
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