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M Monochrom - Vertical banding with low ISO high contrast shots


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I've been exceedingly pleased with the quality of the images from my Monochrom, but today I noticed a rather curious artifact that I had never seen before. The sky was bright, slightly overcast and the sun was reflecting directly off the World Trade Center. ISO was set at 320. In both the DNG and the JPG files coming out of the camera, there is distinct vertical banding throughout the sky portion. You can still see it in the greatly reduced JPG version of the raw file attached here. Is this normal for this rather challenging metering scenario? If I adjust the photo in post (to match what I saw through the viewfinder), the banding essentially disappears, but then the sun's reflection completely blows out. Just curious. Thanks.

 

 

 

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I think it is essentially Photography 101, you can't exceed the limitations of the camera without some sort of downside. You are trying to expose for the highlights without taking into consideration just how dark and under exposed your shadows and mid tones are getting.  Additionally the more you tweak the image under such circumstances in post processing the more you can exaggerate banding, such as adding a lot of Clarity or Structure in ACR or Silver Efex.

 

Steve

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Fair enough. The image was stressed, but not overly post-processed. Both the DNG and SOOC jpg were dark, except for the sun's reflection. I guess I was curious about the cause of the banding. Here's the image as metered by the camera (jpeg and DNG similar)...

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I think we sometimes expect too much from digital. When we shoot black and white film, and underexpose shadows by that much, there is simply nothing left. Of course, there is more headroom in the whites, but it is not unlimited either. I think this was a valid experiment. What I used to do with most film stocks was shoot an exposure test to see how it reacts to under- and over-exposure. I have barely ever done that with any of my digital cameras. The only camera I have done it with was my medium format digital back.

 

Don't hold me to this, but one of these days I fully intend to test my MM1 and some Neopan 400 in my M7.

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The MM is an odd duck and sometimes I can bend the hell out of the files, but very rarely... it does not want to play.  FWIW in the case of this file, I far prefer the unaltered file, but something in between would likely be better still (and probably bading free)

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