January 2006 Archives

I got a nice postcard from artist Scott Blake. I had written to tell him how much I enjoyed his Bar Code Art. We share a common interest in exotic halftones.

In 1994, Duke Magazine did a series of profiles of five Duke alumni working in the Hollywood film industry. It's interesting for me to look at this snapshot of how I saw things then:

I'm concerned about this Nikon D200 banding artifact many (including me) are seeing. Some attribute this problem to blooming. It's not, as far as I can see, typical blooming. Many have taken to calling it banding, even though banding normally refers to posterization due to insufficient color bit depth. Silkypix calls it geometric noise, and provides a geometric noise NR utility.

There are discussions about the issue in several prominent places:

Nikonians.org - D200 and banding

Nikonians.org - D200 Banding II

Nikonians.org - D200 Banding III

Fredmiranda.com - D200 banding is real

DPReview.com - D200 banding noise issues

"I've done testing to confirm whether the reported "vertical banding" issue is for real, and can confirm it exists under given circumstances, the description of which is in the forthcoming review. (Expected around January 10, 2006)" - Bjørn Rørslett

KenRockwell.com Nikon D200 Striping, Vertical Stripe, Banding and Corduroy Effect
(If my camera's banding were as rare as Ken Rockwell's I wouldn't have sent it in.)

On an encouraging note:

This person Chris Maytag had a camera which exhibited the vertical noise "banding" problem, and I don't think you can attribute this particular example of it to blooming or poor exposure on his part, as is often the case with other photos.

http://flickr.com/photos/spincycle/74270369/

In this thread he claims that replacing the camera seems to have alleviated the problem:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/d200/discuss/141067/

If my own operator error is causing my problems, I hope I soon learn to avoid them. If this is a hardware or firmware problem, I may need to get my camera repaired or replaced.

UPDATE 1/5/2006

I contacted Nikon and uploaded the full resolution original .nef of this image:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/jfrancis/D200Banding/D200Banding_X1.jpg

After examining the image they requested I send my camera in for servicing.

I had a Return Authorization Number and a shipping label from B&H camera, and I could have sent it back to them for a refund and walked away, but I chose to send it to Nikon instead.

Why?

1) I believe in the camera and in Nikon.

2) I want a D200 sooner than later, and they are hard to come by.

3) Any new camera I might find in the near future could have the same issue.

4) This camera will get Nikon personal attention.

Call me crazy for opting for servicing over a refund from the retailer, but that's what I'm doing.

I'm confident that this problem will be ironed out soon.

UPDATE 1/7/2006

An opinion is emerging on the internet that D200 banding artifacts generally only occur in badly exposed pictures, and are therefore of no concern to "good" photographers. Anyone who has ever made a Paul Debevec HDR radiance map for computer graphics purposes will, however, recognize that some intentionally "bad" photography is a necessary part of the process of creating High Dynamic Range images, and will want their D200 to be corduroy-free.

UPDATE 1/10/2006

My camera arrived at Nikon in El Segundo today for evaluation and possible service. I expect it back in around 7 - 10 days. If it is serviced, I'll shoot a setup like the one above again and see to what extent the problem is solved.

UPDATE 1/13/2006

Here are some additional threads of interest:

A Discussion of Possible Hardware Fixes

A Preview of Bjorn Rorslett's Evaluation

UPDATE 1/15/2006

Nikon D200 Digital Camera Reviewed by Bjørn Rørslett

A Photoshop CS2 Action Script designed by M. C. Schuster to fix banding

UPDATE 1/18/2006
Thu Jan 5: FedEx D200 to Nikon El Segundo
Fri Jan 6: D200 arrives per FedEx
Tue Jan 10: D200 logged in "officially" arrived per Nikon
Wed Jan 18: (ongoing) waiting for parts.

Service Repair Rank B2 - "If Parts are Available"
Repair Category B2 - "Moderate Repair. Major Parts Replaced"

Thu Jan 19: Status now described as "In Shop"
Fri Jan 20: Status updated to "Bill" - Order Confirmed

Mon Jan 23: Camera has arrived back home - will begin testing tomorrow.

Tue Jan 24: I reproduced the setup that caused banding so easily for me before - a chair in front of an open window - and I would have to say I now consider the banding fixed. I'll repeat this at the bottom of this posting, and I'll elaborate in another posting.

*This work is covered under warranty, however. The bill amount is $0.00

According to the notes I got back from Nikon, nothing seems to have been replaced. The service was described as "ADJ IMAGE CONTROL"

UPDATE 1/20/2006

One individual reports Banding NOT fixed by Nikon El Segundo ... this is troubling news to me.

Imaging Resource - Nikon D200 User Report - scroll down to the section marked Footnote: What Causes This? for some speculation.

UPDATE 1/22/2006
Someone has a Nikon D200 Banding Fixed experience.

A responding commentor has no such luck himself.

UPDATE Tue Jan 24

I reproduced the setup that caused banding so easily for me before - a chair in front of an open window - and I would have to say based on my initial tests I now consider the banding fixed.

I couldn't resist trying some additional tests. The camera now passes just about every test it would have failed before, with this one exception . . .

It is possible under extreme circumstances to induce what Bjørn Rørslett calls Type I Banding.

UPDATE 2/5/2006
Nick Karpowicz provides a Fourier Analysis Image Processing solution to Nikon D200 Banding implemented in MATLAB. I havn't look at this in any detail yet, and I don't have MATLAB software either, but it looks interesting.

UPDATE 2/10/2006
Nikon USA acknowledges and discusses banding according to this forum post.

I had a discussion with someone unrelated to Nikon who shared with me his personal beliefs on the matter:

1) Readout on the D200 chip are in pairs of lines. The chip is made by Sony with an RGBE (Red-Green-Blue-Emerald) Bayer pattern and thus does a 2-line at a time serpentine readout.

Thus lines 0 & 1 read out together, lines 2 & 3 read out together, etc.

2) Readout alternates between the top and the bottom of the chip: 0&1 go UP, 2&3 go DOWN, 4&5 go UP, 6&7 go DOWN, etc. This means that blooming will have a tearing (or as you've guys called it a "Corduroy") pattern on horizontal or near horizontal edges, both on the tops and on the bottoms of those edges.

3) Noise in CCD cameras is always higher on the side of the chip that has the longest readout. Since half of the lines are reading out in the upwards direction and half are reading out in the downwards direction, unless you're looking at the middle of the image, the background noise between pairs of lines will not match. This is even more evident at high ISO values where there is higher amplification on the background noise.

4) CCD logic does NOT have an A/D on chip. Instead the CCD is connected (via solders & wires or traces) to a more standard Flash A/D. If there is a bad connection (or even a marginal one) you can get induced noise. If that is worse in the UP direction than the DOWN direction, you could see this as a preferential noise problem. If one of those traces was acting like an unshielded antenna (which can also happen sometimes) you might see a frequency pattern that could be removed by an FFT.

UPDATE 2/14/2006
DigitalReview.ca Nikon D200 Digital SLR Banding Issue FAQ

According to the info at the link above, Nikon says current production models don't exhibit (type II & type III) "long banding." The article (and the FAQ from Nikon) doesn't mention (type I) "short banding."

UPDATE 2/16/2006
According to this post on dpreview, in Croatia (at least) the fix involves a hardware replacement as well as a recalibration.

UPDATE 2/19/2006: The Other Side of Banding

I thought I'd dig up one of the many test pictures I took with my faulty camera - prior to its repair - that were intended to provoke Nikon D200 banding but failed to do so.

I put these images here to show "the other side of banding," and to try and lend some perspective to the issue.

Yes, you could say that the camera's performance was uneven, in that it often did not band, and that it was hard to predict when it would and when it would not, but I wanted to show that even a faulty, "banding" camera performed extremely well most of the time.

3/21/2006

A pretty good final word on the banding matter in this Nikon D200 Review by Thom Hogan