Is high iso banding present in all M cameras???

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

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Hi, a friend of mine is selling his m246 monochrom, a camera I've had my eyes set for a while and it came at a perfect time. So he agreed to let me use it for a week because I had never used Leica before and so far I absolutely love the RF style and ergonomics of it, however... I shoot a lot in poor light situations (I work as a sound engineer and gig photographer, and a lot of times even 3200 is my base ISO, where going down to 800 or 400 feels almost weird when I shoot during the day). So I've noticed on the 246 mono, straight away at higher ISO, even 3200 ISO sometimes you get this banding noise which covers portions of the image, mostly negative space (i'm sure a lot of people are familiar with it) and it seems unsolvable in post (I use Capture One). What is baffling is that my X-pro 2 Fuji camera has way more recoverability at high ISO in the shadows and thats an APSC sensor, with NO banding whatsoever; and actually I've never seen the high iso banding on the fuji so far, no matter how much I've pushed the image (it has happened that I've had to recover 2+ stops at 12,800 iso and raise the shadows as well, and no banding!) I am a little bit shocked at this performance by the m246 mono to be honest. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty detail and resolution at high iso and it's way better than the fuji in that regard, but the banding is also present, and that ruins the overall result, it's unacceptable. Full frame sensor, higher resolution because of that sweet mono sensor, but... Fujifilm seems better at higher ISO (yeah, granted, the details are a bit worse, but defo really usable!).  And if you're familiar with this issue, it doesn't come down to "expose correctly"! How does an APSC sensor outperform a FULL FRAME MONOCHROME sensor? I can't wrap my head around it.  

 

If only the banding was to disappear I can live with triple the noise that I'm getting now, but I haven't found a solution yet. Does this banding occur in later versions of the M cameras, for example M10, M10 mono, M11??? I assume that its it a problem of the older generation of sensors, but please, if anyone has a solution to the banding, that is NOT Topaz, please let me know!!

 

 

[jaapv]

Expose liberally. Banding and noise is caused by underexposure, especially when you start pulling up shadows. 

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[ramarren]

It's actually easier to design and build an APS-C or FourThirds sized sensor than a FF or larger sensor ... the distances on the smaller sensors make signal control easier according to my engineering buddy who designs these things. 

I don't tend to be mucking with exposures brushing the lower limits of possibility at the highest sensitivity settings very often, so I've hardly ever seen any banding at all with any of my cameras, including M9, M-P240, M-D262, M10-M, and M10-R. Or Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c, or the various different Sony, Pentax, Fuji, Konica, Olympus, and Panasonic I've used. But in digital capture, noise and artifacts always surface at some point with ALL of them when you brush with the lower limits of possibility ... And the math involved in 'pulling up the shadows' exaggerates those things. 

My current Ms are the M10 Monochrom and M10-R. The M10-M in particular has extremely good performance with very good dynamic range and minimal pixelation at ISO 50,000 ... presuming you keep the limitations of that dynamic range in mind and expose *enough* to stay out of the deep water. It's actually marginally cleaner than the Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c, but of course the latter is a color camera so shooting the same boundary scene at the same settings is pushing the Hassy a bit harder to achieve that smooth tonality despite its larger pixels. 

You just can't beat fizziks.

G

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

58 minutes ago, ramarren said:

It's actually easier to design and build an APS-C or FourThirds sized sensor than a FF or larger sensor ... the distances on the smaller sensors make signal control easier according to my engineering buddy who designs these things. 

I don't tend to be mucking with exposures brushing the lower limits of possibility at the highest sensitivity settings very often, so I've hardly ever seen any banding at all with any of my cameras, including M9, M-P240, M-D262, M10-M, and M10-R. Or Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c, or the various different Sony, Pentax, Fuji, Konica, Olympus, and Panasonic I've used. But in digital capture, noise and artifacts always surface at some point with ALL of them when you brush with the lower limits of possibility ... And the math involved in 'pulling up the shadows' exaggerates those things. 

My current Ms are the M10 Monochrom and M10-R. The M10-M in particular has extremely good performance with very good dynamic range and minimal pixelation at ISO 50,000 ... presuming you keep the limitations of that dynamic range in mind and expose *enough* to stay out of the deep water. It's actually marginally cleaner than the Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c, but of course the latter is a color camera so shooting the same boundary scene at the same settings is pushing the Hassy a bit harder to achieve that smooth tonality despite its larger pixels. 

You just can't beat fizziks.

G

Hi, thanks for the reply, its very interesting what you said about APSC and 4/3 sensors. I don't really mind the noise at high Iso, I tend to add grain also just so it masks it and makes it look more film-like, the problem with the banding is that it doesn't disappear even if you that, and its very frustrating using a Full Frame sensor and getting worse results than APSC. I love the full frame look it give at lower iso and honestly as soon as I picked it up and took some photos I was sold on the Leica, but I can't spend that much money and not being able to push the sensor. And yes, I know that the banding happens (MOSTLY) when you recover shadows at high iso, but not always. I'd say 50% of the shots I had in low light above 6400 have banding in the shadows even if correctly exposed (sometimes even the ones that are slightly over exposed to make sure the banding doesn't happen) and its still there. I don't tend to underexpose and then push the shadows, thats not the problem. If only the banding could disappear leaving us with only the noise... I would be very very happy!

 

So I was thinking maybe to save another £1000 and instead of purchasing the 246mono, get the M10 (not mono) instead, with a new generation sensor it should be better. But I don't want to discover that one to have the same issue at high iso; this is kinda the question I'm after, is this an issue of the 246mono or an issue with Leica sensors in general

I want to avoid Sony at all costs even if my girlfriend's A7III smashes the 246mono at high iso with no banding (more noise tho, which I don't mind, especially for bnw!), and it costs less than half of the price... 

[jaapv]

The M10 is more tolerant for underexposing ( but only a little bit than the M240 Mono) but try ETTR. I’m sure that you will get more satisfactory results. 

[dpitt]

16 minutes ago, Tsvetelin Monchev said:

So I was thinking maybe to save another £1000 and instead of purchasing the 246mono, get the M10 (not mono) instead, with a new generation sensor it should be better. But I don't want to discover that one to have the same issue at high iso; this is kinda the question I'm after, is this an issue of the 246mono or an issue with Leica sensors in general

Yes, the M10 would probably be the best and easiest solution.

If you want to give the M246 an other chance, you can try a trick that I use with my M9 in low light. The M9 is by today's standard a very poor performer in low light, much worse than the M246, but you can squeeze every ounce of it out by shooting at base ISO and pulling the shadows rather than increasing the ISO value when shooting the scene. Basically I make use of the very flexible RAW files of the Leica M.

So, with your M246 that would mean shooting in RAW mode and at fixed ISO 320. Put it in manual mode, and underexpose up to 5 stops. That is equivalent to ISO 5000.  This only works in base ISO, so using ISO 640 or higher is worse than 320.
In post you can use the exposure sliders and HDR shadows and highlights, or levels to bring up the exposure as intended. On these old Ms this gives usually much better results compared to shooting at max ISO. 

In essence, with my M9 (at ISO 160 base ISO), I just shoot with my lens full open, and at 1/15 or 1/30 depending on the movement of the subject. Don't worry if your back screen shows the shots as almost completely black 🙂.
Everything will come to live in PP. And this way you know that you did not use an ISO that is too high for the scene. Most of the time 2 or 3 stops are all I need.
I rarely had not enough light, even at F2.0.  I think that you have at least 2 stops advantage with the M246 so you could probably even use 1/60 and get decent results in PP.

[Al Brown]

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The banding is disappearing the higher up the model range you go.
Still quite bad in M monochrom, it gets immensely better in M10M and the best Leica ever did in M11M.

[Al Brown]

15 minutes ago, dpitt said:

you can squeeze every ounce of it out by shooting at base ISO and pulling the shadows rather than increasing the ISO value when shooting the scene.

This process is fun but it immensely ups the noise and cuts dynamic range significantly.

[dpitt]

2 hours ago, Al Brown said:

This process is fun but it immensely ups the noise and cuts dynamic range significantly.

Not on the M9 in my experience  with either LR and C1P and I am pretty sure the same on the M 240 family.
You get less noise compared to the equivalent ISO value.
I must admit it works best up to +3 stops, but in extreme cases you get away with +5

Edited June 5 by dpitt

[jaapv]

Maybe, but CMOS sensors react differently from CCD.

In general: Fill those pixels to cut out noise. The rest is just the processing pipeline. How does one fill pixels - or film crystals for that matter- ? Aperture and shutterspeed, nothing else. Has been that way in photography for at least 150 years.

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

3 hours ago, dpitt said:

Yes, the M10 would probably be the best and easiest solution.

If you want to give the M246 an other chance, you can try a trick that I use with my M9 in low light. The M9 is by today's standard a very poor performer in low light, much worse than the M246, but you can squeeze every ounce of it out by shooting at base ISO and pulling the shadows rather than increasing the ISO value when shooting the scene. Basically I make use of the very flexible RAW files of the Leica M.

So, with your M246 that would mean shooting in RAW mode and at fixed ISO 320. Put it in manual mode, and underexpose up to 5 stops. That is equivalent to ISO 5000.  This only works in base ISO, so using ISO 640 or higher is worse than 320.
In post you can use the exposure sliders and HDR shadows and highlights, or levels to bring up the exposure as intended. On these old Ms this gives usually much better results compared to shooting at max ISO. 

In essence, with my M9 (at ISO 160 base ISO), I just shoot with my lens full open, and at 1/15 or 1/30 depending on the movement of the subject. Don't worry if your back screen shows the shots as almost completely black 🙂.
Everything will come to live in PP. And this way you know that you did not use an ISO that is too high for the scene. Most of the time 2 or 3 stops are all I need.
I rarely had not enough light, even at F2.0.  I think that you have at least 2 stops advantage with the M246 so you could probably even use 1/60 and get decent results in PP.

Thats really interesting way of working, I have to try it, but probably would need 125th of a second at least, you know, for live music photography sometimes I can go down to 60 but I try to keep it between 125 and 250 (of course i go even down to 1/15 for blur shots and that, but thats exclusively for that). That said, I could probably try at home exposing at 1600 iso and than bringing however many stops I can, or even 800, because some venues are so dark I've shot entire gigs at 12800 on my fujifilm cameras, and not too worried. But if I have to shoot everything at 12500 with this one, really makes me nervous. I wish they made something, some sort of filter, whatever, to prevent this banding pattern to occur, whatever if we get a little more noise overall!! 

Edited June 5 by Tsvetelin Monchev

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

3 hours ago, jaapv said:

The M10 is more tolerant for underexposing ( but only a little bit than the M240 Mono) but try ETTR. I’m sure that you will get more satisfactory results. 

Will have to give it a try, just can't deal with this banding ruining images!

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

3 hours ago, Al Brown said:

The banding is disappearing the higher up the model range you go.
Still quite bad in M monochrom, it gets immensely better in M10M and the best Leica ever did in M11M.

Yeah I bet! Unfortunately the M11 mono is worth more than anything I owe right now plus anything I have in the bank ahahah

[jaapv]

38 minutes ago, Tsvetelin Monchev said:

Will have to give it a try, just can't deal with this banding ruining images!

 

[jaapv]

I interpret this rather simplistically:  Specular highlights and highlights that should be white without structure anyway can be blown with impunity. You can always burn them in a bit in post. I measure the exposure for the important image elements and on manual, easy to do on an M. I aim for the fullest possible histogram and limit the pulling up of shadows to a minimum. 

[Al Brown]

3 hours ago, dpitt said:

Not on the M9 in my experience  with either LR and C1P and I am pretty sure the same on the M 240 family.
You get less noise compared to the equivalent ISO value.
I must admit it works best up to +3 stops, but in extreme cases you get away with +5

Here is an underexposed scene from the street in Budapest and next to it is the scene lifted by 3 stops, shadows only. Leica's CCD sensor and exact process as you suggested.
Also in reference of post #2 by Jaap.

But I realize you might be talking about M9 Monochrom even though you never mention it anywhere, just saying M9 and I am thus also talking about M9.

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[fotomas]

With my M 246 I can go up to 10000 ASA without banding (with my M 240 3200 ASA), but then you have to expose spot on. If you try to make it brighter in the post it's gone. So I mostly try to use the M 246 with 6400 ASA (M 240 2000 ASA) so that I have a bit of reserves. Mostly that's enough for me, and I have in general only Summicrons, so only f 2.0. Would be even better with Summilux or Noctiluxen.

Here an example from the M 246 taken at 6400 ASA, Voigtländer 4,5/15 mm, 1/25 second. Lightconditions were poor and heavy backlight also. Guess it was taken at f 4.5, so around 1/125 should have been possible with a 2,0 lens.

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So I would say it is possible to avoid banding with the M 240 / M 246, but if you don't want to deal with this the M 10 or later is the better option.

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

2 hours ago, jaapv said:

 

nice one i ll have a look!!

 

[Tsvetelin Monchev]

2 hours ago, jaapv said:

I interpret this rather simplistically:  Specular highlights and highlights that should be white without structure anyway can be blown with impunity. You can always burn them in a bit in post. I measure the exposure for the important image elements and on manual, easy to do on an M. I aim for the fullest possible histogram and limit the pulling up of shadows to a minimum. 

Sounds exactly how I expose usually

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[Tsvetelin Monchev]

24 minutes ago, fotomas said:

With my M 246 I can go up to 10000 ASA without banding (with my M 240 3200 ASA), but then you have to expose spot on. If you try to make it brighter in the post it's gone. So I mostly try to use the M 246 with 6400 ASA (M 240 2000 ASA) so that I have a bit of reserves. Mostly that's enough for me, and I have in general only Summicrons, so only f 2.0. Would be even better with Summilux or Noctiluxen.

Here an example from the M 246 taken at 6400 ASA, Voigtländer 4,5/15 mm, 1/25 second. Lightconditions were poor and heavy backlight also. Guess it was taken at f 4.5, so around 1/125 should have been possible with a 2,0 lens.

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So I would say it is possible to avoid banding with the M 240 / M 246, but if you don't want to deal with this the M 10 or later is the better option.

Good input, thanks for that! My friend is letting me shoot a gig tomorrow, I might come back with some results here!