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Canon Banding and Nik Dfine 2

turtle

New member
I've been tempted to give Canon the boot due to the banding problems I have encountered when lifting deep shadows (which seems to be necessary when shooting cityscapes at night with 11.7 stops of DR). My 5D II was awful and while my 5D III is better, its still a problem than needs fixing if I am to use the images for prints.

I have also become a bit tired of hearing people dismiss banding as evidence of 'file abuse' in post, so picked out an old shot that shows how banding is something that occurs in quite ordinary processing of certain files. I lifted the shadows and exposure as I might ordinarily process this file and then ran it though Dfine. The article can be found here.

If you have not use Dfine 2 and find banding a nuissance, but intend to stick with Canon (like me), then Nik Dfine is an absolute must have. Its certainly a heck of a lot cheaper (and less stressful) than switching out systems. Sony A7 and A7R bodies and Dfine are a good alternative!

Example before and after shown below, but bear in mind that it is much worse than this in full resolution print.
 

turtle

New member
gazwas, this is precisely what is so boring about banding issues and the worn out old arguments by those who just refuse to accept that it is a problem for others, because it is not a problem for them. The argument is always the same:

You don't know about exposure.
You don't know about processing.
You are taking the wrong kind of pictures.
You are imagining it.

Unfortunately for the above arguments, 'I do' for the first two and 'I am not' for the second.

However, even when I post a perfectly realistic example is posted the arguments don't change. This is what I find so sad. I have no beef with Canon per se. I just want to get the result I want and find Canon is the sensor manufacturer whose sensors don't allow me to achieve it without additional software.

There IS banding in the example shown, isn't there?

As for your assertion that the shadows were increased by an excessive amount, what precisely would your solution have been? Blown highlights (because with a single exposure they would have been blown in an epic way)? Multiple exposures? Sure, but that introduces a bunch of other issues and constraints amply covered by the article. It is not always a solution. Moving water? Wind blown branches? Backlit person/animal that keeps moving? Maybe you don't make the creative choices that result in these issues, but I do thanks very much and so do enough other people to matter. 'We' are not suggesting that you should care if you do not have a problem, but attempting to devalue my efforts with giant capital letters and half baked efforts to shoot down the value of it is hardly good natured, is it?. I write to explain a solution to a well known issue (for some) and your response (in essence) is to say 'no, no, you are mistaken. There is no problem if you do things right. If can't do that, maybe you should use other bodies'. Its absurd and insulting.

I do use Sony bodies as well (which you'd know if you'd read the article), but the whole point of this is that not everyone wants to pay another $2k for a body and adaptor for their lenses and Dfine offers a nice, vastly cheaper, solution. I therefore thought I'd be a nice and helpful chap and outline a solution for those unwilling to buy into Sony FE bodies like I have.

Just because you do not have a problem with banding, does NOT mean it does not exist. Just because most photographers don't, does not mean it is not a severe problem for a minority, because of the subject matter they shoot and the conditions under which they shoot it.

I come from a film background and shoot a lot of contra jour work. It's in my DNA. I don't want to change the way I create images just because Canon sensors are not up to the dynamic range challenges that result! Neither do a lot of people, but sadly every time someone posts something like I have, the first person to jump up is invariably one to say one or all of the four points above. Sure, there has not been a huge number of responses to this post, but that's because its pretty self-explanatory, but I do suspect that over time it will be helpful to some with the same issues I have. This is why I wrote it. Its called being helpful.
 

gazwas

Active member
*EDIT*

Deleted my post because I can't be bothered to start yet another argument bashing cameras in these forums.
 

DaveS

Active member
Thanks for the info, I have the Nik Collection and didn't know about that feature.

much appreciated,
Dave
 
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