Severe banding in K10 d photos

[Lilchilichoco]

Hi Pentax users.......I got my k10 d about 10 days back and was really happy with the pictures I took,till they were printed. My night shots had 1 inch bands running down the pic vertically. Also in day shots of a building there are some strange green vertical lines running parallel to windows and wall depressions.These were not visible either in the computer or in the lcd preview screen,but showed clearly in the prints. The prints were all at A3 size. What shall I do? Give it back? I had read about these lines,but since some people also posted that they had no such issues,I was hoping I'd be lucky too.:(

[coldrain]

It is practically impossible for something to clearly show up in a print, but not on your screen... unless you have a very bad screen or very bad screen settings.

Can you show crops of offending areas, and scaled down versions of the photos?

[Lilchilichoco]

coldrain,I had posted those shots in my thread in the photo gallery and not one person who commented on them saw them.The shots have been downsized further now that the thread is cold,but the original post had fairly large shots. My computer has a very clear screen...it's brand new...I have the resized image on my desktop. There was absolutely NO TRACE of any such thing till I got them printed. I am sure if it didn't show up in my post,it will not show up in crop either.

[sjseto]

It sounds like it might be a problem with the printing process, rather than the camera.

Can you get the same photos printed somewhere else, to compare?

Stephanie

[Lilchilichoco]

sjseto, the print was on Canon 9000 pro, they only showed up in the even night sky colour of the night shots,and the day shots there was no banding except the thin vertical and a few horizontal green lines running parallel to windows and wall depressions.

But I will get the prints from another printer. Thanks for suggesting.

Best Regards

[Lilchilichoco]

"Even though some dictionaries show "lense" as a word, it still it wrong. Just use "lens" if you are concerned about bad english.

If you really are convinced there is a problem with the photo you took, just post a crop of an area where it showed up on the print and a cropped version.
It is impossible for banding to be visible on a print and not on the screen. The banding often discussed with the K10D (banding is a wrong term anyway, banding normally means that you see colour bands where there shoudl be smooth gradations) is always visible on screen.
So again, please show crops.

Your printer is most likely at fault."

Lense is not 'bad' English,it's partially accepted English. Like 'colour' has now become 'color'. That's how language is modified,and new words,new spellings enter. Bad English is not being able to form a grammatically correct sentence,which is not influenced by place of origin of the speaker,but is simply bad grammar,or completely unacceptable formations, like "I is going" or ,'freind' for 'friend'.

'Banding' or vertical stripes in long exposure shots is a known issue with Pentax,something that Pentax acknowledges in the the firmware update 1.11. Why is the printer being blamed everywhere?
If it was the printer,it would have shown up in other shots as well,which were of much faster shutter speed.
Upon magnification I cannot see the bands. But they have surfaced in the print. That's all there is to it.
I still do plan to get another print of the same shots though I do not accept this as a printer fault.
You could however magnify these and see the green lines on the edges of windows.



22171

Best Regards

[T06]

Are there shots you have of other windows doing the same. Do you have the latest firmware in the 'Pentax';) I'm not digging here mate but I do have a 'Collins' dictionary that has approx 1800 pages in the mutha & there is no color or lense. This thing is big & heavy & would probably knock a dutchman out with a good swing,;) now thats big & heavy!!!!!:D :D

[Lilchilichoco]

Hi Kev.......yes I do have more such shots....with the green lines.

I am really not sure if the firmware will fix it.

Some words come into acceptance with different cultures and places speaking a language which isn't essentially their own. 'Colour' is original British English,'color' is how the Americans spell it. Try and write 'colour' in a post here and it will show a red line underneath it to tell u it's wrong....till u change the spelling to 'color'.

Anyway.....language is a very dynamic thing....and the speaking of English by various cultures and races and people has allowed several modifications which are neither right nor wrong. If you seriously get into the argument for and against the right and wrong in English,there will be one more reason to kill each other.....:).I am more particular about grammar. And the totally unacceptable spellings........like 'apperture'......:)



Best Regards

[coldrain]

All I see is slight CA in the window shot, on one side a magenta-ish cast, on the other side a very slight green-ish cast.
This is quite normal and caused by the optics. Nothing to worry about, and nothing to blame your K10D for. CA is when light of different wave lengths pass through the optics through slightly different paths. You will see coloured edges on contrasting areas, where light areas contain all colours and dark almost none, this is where you can see that the different colours diffract differently through the lens system.

I still would like to see a crop of the area that causes the "banding" on the printer though.

I am still not sure why you persist "lense" is an ok way to write a normal word like "lens" though ;).
Pentax themselves call the object in question "K10D Body, DA 18-55mm Lens".

Wiktionary has an entry for lens:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lens
1. An object, usually made of glass, that focuses or defocuses the light that passes through it.

If you look up "lense":
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lense
1. Common misspelling of lens.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not know the word "lense" and suggests it must be a mistyping, giving a whole list of possible words one might have meant, including the words "lens" and "lenses".

[Ray Schnoor]

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not know the word "lense" and suggests it must be a mistyping, giving a whole list of possible words one might have meant, including the words "lens" and "lenses".
According to dictionary.com, they have a reference from the 2002 Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary,
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lense

Ray.

[Lilchilichoco]

ok coldrain......I didn't know about how bad can chromatic aberration be....but if this is what it is.....I'm not sure I can live with it;).....is it essentially a lens(e);) problem? Would u say that a better one would take care of the problem?

I am posting the crops of the pic you want.

22178

Thanks and Best Regards

[coldrain]

Chromatic aberrations can be a lot worse than what you see from your kitlens.
You will not really see them (from that photo) on most prints, unless you really look for them.

Getting a better lens which has less CA problems will give you less problems, but again, the CA in that crop you showed is not very bad.

If you shoot in RAW, CA problems can be almost eliminated with some RAW convertors.

Here is an example of CA at 12mm from my 12-24mm Tokina... you can see that the CA your kit lens displays is not all that bad. Most wide lenses will show CA problems, wide lenses have to diffract light more and so CA will be worse. In this example, the red "channel" gets bent less, making the red "picture" bigger. White (light colours) has all colours, including red. Because the red channel is too big, you stills ee some red from the "white" going into the dark. On the other side of the dark areas you then will see a blue-green, because the red is too big and goes missing in the beginning of the light area.
So, with my Tokina you will see red/blue-green shadows, with your Pentax kit lens apparently you get to see magenta/green shadows.

One lens that I would try out if I had a Pentax is the 16-45 f4. Try it out in the store at 16mm and then look at home if you like what it does.

[coldrain]

Hmm.. even bringup up the shadows to the extreme does not really reveal any serious banding or noise patterns...

You may be looking at little bit too critical to the results at the moment?
The kitlens from Pentax is not great, so you of course can try and find a replacement for it with better contrast and better CA performance. But the banding... the sample that you posted seems normal.

[Lilchilichoco]

coldrain....I told you I didn't see anything upon magnification. And you report the same. Now what do we do.......should I take a shot of the printed photo and post........? The green in the day shot is very visible at A3 size.........am I supposed to take it as okay? Do you have a big print of your pic.......does it show that much?

BTW....that's a beautiful photo......

You should've seen my night shots......they were something....
I don't know if I'll ever make any again...

Oh well I will.....just too sad with all this going haywire.


Best Regards

[SpecialK]

I would not be too quick to blame the camera for anything until you use a much better lens on it.

[Wesan]

Hi Pentax users.......I got my k10 d about 10 days back and was really happy with the pictures I took,till they were printed. My night shots had 1 inch bands running down the pic vertically. Also in day shots of a building there are some strange green vertical lines running parallel to windows and wall depressions.These were not visible either in the computer or in the lcd preview screen,but showed clearly in the prints. The prints were all at A3 size. What shall I do? Give it back? I had read about these lines,but since some people also posted that they had no such issues,I was hoping I'd be lucky too.:(

Hi Lilchilichoco 2PDG!

Even though I'm not a Pentax user, I hope it's OK that I share my thoughts about this? :o

About the banding on the printed night shots: If the banding does not show on the images, when you view them on your computer monitor or on the camera's display, but only on the prints, it sounds to me like it has to do with the printer. Because if it doesn't show on your monitor (or the camera's display), even when you zoom in on the picture, it should not show on the prints, unless the printer "puts" the banding there. I think banding like that can occur on inkjet printers, though. It might be possible to adjust the printer, so the banding disappears. Maybe the software (or the manual) of the printer has some trouble shooting for the problem, and a solution to it?

The green lines running parallel to windows are most likely chromatic aberration, CA, as mentioned in previous posts. And that is, as also mentioned in previous posts, due to how the light is affected by the lens, so to speak. There is also a similar effect called "purple fringing", which can be seen in Jeff's sample photos taken in the "Purple fringing tunnel of doom". I think there is software that can reduce (or remove) CA and purple fringing, even on jpeg-images, however. Chromatic aberration and purple fringing are two different things, as far as I remember from a previous thread posted a long time ago.

So...you might be able to solve both these problems, 2PDG. The banding on the prints might be solved by adjusting the printer. And the CA in the pictures can be reduced or removed through software. At least as far as I understand. :)

Still...it might be a good idea, if you took a photo of a print with banding and post it. Then, maybe we can tell if the banding is caused by the printer or not.

[coldrain]

The only conclusion can be:
If you get real streaks/banding/whatever strange artifacts in that dark when printing, it is introduced by the printing, since there is nothing strange in the photo itself.

Do not complain that we blame the printer, it is just that way if it is not in the photo itself. And you will find CA in all kinds of lenses, so no reason to get upset with pentax and the kit lens. A little tip: if you dislike CA, use a good RAW convertor to get rid of it mostly. And Nikon lenses have on average more CA than Canon lenses, and I think also more than good Pentax lenses.

[Lilchilichoco]

wesan........you are an absolute darling!!! Just reading that made me feel better. Thanks for your gentleness and support. It's great to hear from you always:). I am trying to get more prints. Truth is.......I don't want to give my Pentax back. It's like your first love......

coldrain.....thanks for your reply. I am getting more prints. CA,as and when I face it,I'll SOS. Thanks for your interest and taking the time. It's very encouraging.

Special K, I don't want to give my cam up. I just hope there actually isn't any long exposure issues.



Thanks and Best Regards

[Wesan]

wesan........Thanks for your gentleness and support. It's great to hear from you always:)...

You're welcome, Lilchilichoco 2PDG. I try to be a..."gentleman"...:D

[Lilchilichoco]

Ok everyone.......I got my second set of prints. And I apologize for all the hullabaloo. There is NO VPN or vertical banding in long exposure shots. It seems,as suggested by all of you,it was a printer thing.

The only reason why I doubted that was because the very same printer gave no such bands on a much faster speed shot. I had 3 long exposure shots and one fast one. ALL LE shots had these bands. And the the one with the fast shutter speed had none. So, hope you understand why I got all hyper about this.



Coldrain......thanks a ton,for pushing till I got over the depression and got the prints:)!!!!

wesan.....thank you too....as always....kind and gentle:).


I again apologize. Thanks for all your support.


Best Regards

[pas49ras]

Glad to hear that Lilchilichoco, because as posted your pictures were very nice. We all got at english lesson as well...as to the spelling of lens/lense:D

[coldrain]

I am very glad that you have found the problem, I guess the black print head will need a cleaning huh?
I hope you will enjoy your camera :)
And that you will get some really nice lenses for it in future too...

Have fun :)

[Lilchilichoco]

Thanks coldrain. I am enjoying my cam:)....love it!! Still miles to go....don't understand most of it....but I am learning.

The original scare-print was done on a printer set up for an exhibition....so it might not be working optimally. Except that only the LE shots had the bars.

I might be off to London this August for about a month.....so am planning on at least one lens...:)....and a tripod.


Thanks again for all your help. You've been kind.

Thanks and Best Regards

[suemccartin]

After long experience with a 6000D pixma I can tell you that every fifty prints or so it's a good idea to do a head clean. I've seen the bands you're talking about more than once.