One of the big headlines when the first Nikon Z6 and Z7 tests appeared online is that they exhibited a pattern of “banding,” or line pattern noise, when recovering shadows too much. Although most reviewers were quick to point out that 5-6 stops of shadow recovery is excessive, this issue nonetheless drew a lot of attention. But now that we have performed complete dynamic range tests on today’s mirrorless cameras at Photography Life, my question is… why?
Let’s start with an example. The following image has been underexposed by six stops at base ISO 100. I opened it in RawDigger, then exported as a TIFF and recovered the image with the “Exposure” slider in Capture One. As you can see, there are indeed visible lines of noise, although only in certain parts of the image. I’ve circled the most obvious patterns:
However, just because the Nikon Z6 has these patterns of noise doesn’t mean that…
Wait.
Ah, sorry – it looks like the image above isn’t from the Nikon Z6, but from the Canon EOS R. (UPDATE: This is from the older firmware 1.0.0 on the EOS R. The new 1.1.0 version is actually much worse in terms of banding, as we explain in our new article.)
Okay, here’s the image I meant to show. Once again, I underexposed this photo by six stops, recovered it in RawDigger and Capture One, and then circled the offending noise. Note that this is a 100% crop:
This time, there is noticeably less line pattern noise, although it’s still visi—
Oh, that’s the Sony A7 III. My bad.
All right, I’m kidding around. But the two examples above go to show that line pattern noise isn’t a Nikon-only factor. The Canon EOS R has a decent amount, and the Sony A7 III has a bit as well. I’ll cut out the act now and show how the actual Z6 sample image compares:
No tricks, that’s the Z6 image. The most noticeable thing to me is that it appears greener than the other photos – but that’s something you can correct with a small white balance adjustment. In terms of line pattern noise, though, it has perhaps a slight bit more than the A7 III, and definitely less than the Canon EOS R. Certainly not what you would expect based on the articles online.
Just for good measure, here is a sample image from the camera that sparked this discussion, the Nikon Z7:
I’d say the Z7 is the best of the lot. This is largely due to the lower base ISO of 64; the other cameras here would likely show similar performance if they offered such a low native ISO. Although you can see a bit of line pattern noise in some of the gray color swatches on the right, it is far from objectionable.
Here are the same four images one more time so that you can click and compare without the circles covering them. Note that I downsampled the higher-resolution photos so that they all appear the same size for comparison:
I definitely don’t begrudge initial reviewers for writing about the Z6’s and Z7’s line pattern noise when the shadows are boosted too much. It might not be the most real-world of tests, but part of this job is figuring out how these cameras fundamentally work, and—
Cough, cough! Who underexposes images by six stops?? Ahem.
Sorry, something in my throat.
Anyway, the Z6 and Z7 certainly aren’t perfect in terms of line pattern noise. However, I can’t help but feel some surprise that this issue became so strongly associated with them, yet is hardly mentioned in discussions of other mirrorless options today. After all, the root cause of these banding issues is generally due to on-sensor phase detection pixels, which are part of the autofocus system in nearly all modern mirrorless cameras – making this more than just a single company’s problem.
So, how did it happen that the Z cameras took most of the heat for this type of noise? A large part of it is due to the trickle-down nature of camera reviews. One or two big websites publish a set of high-quality tests; several others copy the pro/con page and hammer out a watered-down version of the original review. You can see obvious examples on any website that lists “banding” as a negative for the Z6 or Z7, yet not in their review of the EOS R. It means the website most likely did not test these cameras side by side, but simply took existing information and repackaged it with a few unique sample images. It’s the quick, easy way to write a review, and I’m guessing you’ll see more and more of them in the coming years.
That doesn’t mean it is a bad idea to read about small differences like this, but you also shouldn’t take everything you hear about cameras today at face value. Look at sample images for yourself, and try to figure out whether you’ll see any of these issues in your own images. At least in the case of line pattern noise, you almost certainly won’t; we’ve taken thousands of photos with all these cameras and never once seen the issue in real-world shooting. In short, there are many more important things to care about when buying a camera today, like whether it was manufactured in Thailand or Japan, and what color the camera is.
Well said, Spencer.
Thank you, Tuan! It’s one of those topics where few overarching comparisons have been done so far, so I thought it would be interesting to test.
Hi Spencer,
I enjoyed your humor in this one. The logic, too. “Cough, cough! Who underexposes images by six stops?? Ahem. Sorry, something in my throat.” And yet, two people at PL who shall remain nameless – cough, cough. Ahem! – are fond of blowing photos up to 100% magnification (who blows photos up to 100% magnification??), peering at the farthest corner, and exclaiming if a few pixels aren’t as sharp as a tack. HA! And then judge the camera or lens by those pesky pixels.
Oh, my! Must have something stuck in my throat!!!! :)
Couldn’t resist being playful in response to the playfulness of this article.
Disclaimer: My comment is in jest and has no meaning or relevance to anything whatsoever.
Glad you enjoyed it, Elaine!
I think there is a spectrum from extreme pixel peepers to those who argue that no one will ever notice. I have to say, I’ve always been the type of person who zooms into the corners of an image with a frown… and there is no denying that our lens and camera tests at Photography Life are more rigorous when we include some extreme tests like this. But the technical side has to be coupled with more important creative elements of photography – light, subject, and composition – if it is to make a meaningful difference in the real quality of an image.
What firmware version is on the Canon R ?
Todd, this is the earlier firmware – I didn’t realize they released an update a week ago. Interesting to see Canon mention horizontal pattern noise in their 1.1.0 announcement. I’ll download the new version and redo the EOS R test tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing if the noise changes! If so, we’ll put out an article informing people to download the newer firmware sooner rather than later.
However, even if nothing changes, keep in mind that the noise in the EOS R shot really is not objectionable. This is pushed 6 stops and viewed at 100%, with no noise correction, which is not something anyone would ever do in practice.
Okay, I’ve retested the scene under identical conditions with the new firmware, and I’ll post the results shortly. But I wanted to leave this comment first, because the new results are actually significantly worse than the initial ones. I’m running more tests and figuring out what the cause may be, but for now, don’t upgrade your firmware to the newest version on the EOS R.
Todd, take a look at our new article demonstrating that the new EOS R firmware version results in worse performance: photographylife.com/news/…sion-1-1-0
People underexposing their picture by 5 to 6 stops should just stop doing photography.
LOL :) I agree with that completely. I can understand the need to recover details in a photo, but if a scene has that much dynamic range, most of us would be doing bracketing for HDR or luminosity masking anyway…
I think, that leads again to a wrong track. It could be understood like: ” if you expose well enough, no banding, but if you need dynamic range, banding will be back”.
And I don’t think it would be noticeable eben if I need the full width of DR. Even if there’s a bit of banding, it becomes only visible by lifting the shadows 5-6 stops. But I think, most expansion on shadows are something like 1-3 stops shadow recovery, not exposure correction in general. I don’t want to become shadows as bright as other parts, I’d like to show, there’s still some contours in the shadows. And for that banding is as irrelevant as I always saw it since I got the Z 7. :D
Hey Spencer: Cool article. You took the effort and compared apples with apples, thank you very much!
Ha! Thank you.
Thank you! Just the kind of proper investigation and analysis and good reporting that we need.
Bravo! Nice debunk. I’ve sure seen no issues with branding in my time with the Z cameras.
On a side topic, I am surprised no one is taking about the fact that you can’t lock down the depth of field preview for tripod landscape work in any still mode setting. DOF live view is limited to no smaller than 5.6 in still mode without holding the DOF button down. I assume it’s for autofocus improvement, but I’d really like Nikon to let me override it in manual focus mode at least. It would be easy in firmware.
It’s the default to stop down on my D850 and D500’s live views and you can lock aperture wide open with the DOF preview button to get a brighter clearer view in low light. This setup makes checking focus in the landscape a breeze. I need that with the Z cameras as well please.
Before I checked the photo I was left aghast thinking “how can this be a z6, my damn d3200 has less noise in extreme shadow recovery than that” but then I felt much better knowing that it was just the usual Canon-based sensor DR ;)
As to why the Zs were driven into the ground on this one thing in particular, it’s certainly because of the reasons you pointed out (and I still think DPR must have had a couple of duds because I haven’t seen such bad banding anywhere else that I have in their images, maybe theirs was the worst case scenario after all) and in the case of the Eos R, well, there are so many things to criticise that camera for, that I’m willing to forgive people from not adding one more to the list, especially since if it’s already not realistic to recover 6+ stops on Sony sensors, it’s downright pointless to do it on Canon ones, it isn’t even a matter of “well, it’s not really a real-life scenario, but still some people could do this” but rather “look at that atrocious mess, no one using this camera would ever recover 5+ stops because the image just looks like garbage” (with all due respect to Eos R users, but this is simply calling a spade a spade, there’s no point in dancing around the matter).
I’m personally not that fussed about it. I can’t remember a single time that I had to recover 6+ stops (other than doing it just to see what the result would be) with a dslr, I can’t really think of a scenario that would lead me to doing it either but again, I have no doubts that some people will do it. Still, considering the quality of the image one would get, I think banding isn’t really a huge problem here.
It’s quite possible that DPR and early testers had some duds. For all I know, Nikon fixed the issue almost immediately in their manufacturing chain (although my Z7 is from one of the first batches, pre-ordered the minute it went live – and as you can see above, it only shows the most minor of banding issues).
You’re right to think that there is no real reason to be concerned here. If the problem was relevant to real-world shooting, I would have no qualms about trading my Z7 for the also excellent (and more refined in many ways) D850.
No Spencer you’ve got it wrong I’m afraid: now that the MP marketing avenue is over, and the ISO marketing opportunity is over, and the AF speed marketing game is over, and the video resolution marketing spin is over, and the lens sharpness marketing manoeuvre is over; it is absolutely critical from a marketing standpoint that camera companies can debate about 6-stop recovered pictures, otherwise what would all the marketing guys and internet measurebators have to do? Might even leave them time to take a good picture, quelle horreur!
The Canon Eos R doesn’t have phase detection. So, I think the banding problems does not have any relation with phase detection in sensor.
Concur. Canon uses DPAF. What then could possibly be causing the banding we can see.
No, dual pixel is marketing speak for phase detect AF – www.usa.canon.com/inter…cus-(DPAF)
See: “Put simply, DPAF takes autofocus to the next level. It provides both smooth and consistent focus for a wide range of photo and video applications. Each pixel on the CMOS imaging sensor has two separate, light-sensitive photodiodes, which convert light into an electronic signal. Independently, each half of a pixel detects light through separate micro lenses, atop each pixel. During AF detection, the two halves of each pixel — the two photodiodes — send separate signals, which are analyzed for focus information. Then, an instant later when an actual image or video frame is recorded, the two separate signals from each pixel are combined into one single one, for image capturing purposes. This greatly improves AF speed over the majority of the area on which you’re focusing. The result is PHASE-detection autofocus, which surveys the scene and recognizes not only whether a subject is in focus or not, but in which direction (near or far), and by how much.”
Yes, Dual Pixel is a kind of phase-detect AF, but the implementation is very different. Regular on-sensor PDAF uses special pixels that are partly masked off, and those pixels are only used for PDAF, not for image capture. Canon’s Dual Pixel approach has no masked-off pixels, but rather two photo receptors (sub-pixels) at every pixel site, and they can be used both for AF and image capture. It’s not clear to me how these two different ways of doing PDAF would result in the same kind of banding.
Thanks for bringing this out. That is why I do not trust online reviews any more and most often they’re reviews on preproduction model.
A reasonable analysis is much appreciated. Thank you.
Hahaha gotta love such “articles” from butthurt Nikon fanboy. The camera is inferior to the A73 in every way just accept it and stop making a fool of yourself
What a sad comment
On the contrary, you have very well shown yourself to be one.
And now we spot the insecure Sony user who has to put down others to feel better about themselves.
Not sure how you can interpret this article as being anti-Sony, when I specifically mentioned that the Sony A7 III has lower banding than any of these cameras except possibly the Nikon Z7. Then again, I suppose that’s not the point.
This article hits exactly my kind of humour – great! :-)
I believe that the original Z 7 banding “issues” originated in comparison to the D850 (similar sensor resolution), rather than comparisons to other mirrorless cameras. In that respect, the banding comparison is valid — but of course an evaluation in the context of other mirrorless cameras is more relevant.
This article is much appreciated. I had a salesmen yesterday trying to tell me that Nikon was the worst of all the mirrorless for banding. I guess just like everything in life the name on the tool doesn’t matter but the hands in which it used do.
A well thought out and humorous article.
Very well done.
Spencer,
Thanks for putting things into perspective! However, that green tinting in the shadows is rather irritating… Is this a well-known shortcoming of the Z6? And is it really easy to fix by adjusting the WB?
And if you don’t mind my asking: Do you already know when your Z6 review will be published?
To me, it’s not much of a problem, and is rather a result of the process I used to examine this RAW file – opening in RawDigger first, and only then in Capture One. Interestingly, opening the RAW file first in Capture One (or Lightroom) doesn’t exhibit this issue. So, it’s not that it isn’t there – RawDigger is the best way to look at what really exists in a RAW file – but that most users will never see it, since their post processing software already has corrections built in. And even if yours doesn’t, a tint adjustment here went a long way (not perfect) toward solvi the problem. It also did not appear at all when 4 stops underexposed and only a bit at 5 stops.
Z6 review will be out within a few days!
Many thanks for your quick feedback! You guys are really great. :-)
Thank you Spencer! I love your articles.
This is is a non issue for me as it involves recovering 6 stops. Something I will not encounter regularly.
But your article is very welcome and cautions us not to believe everything we read and hear …
And it was very entertaining also … with bits of suspense and drama …
Great article. Funy but also right to the Point. Hwo the hell underexpose 5 stops? 😂
Is banding visible when you underexpose 3, 4 and 5 EV as well?
3 and 4 stops – no, even with the Canon, I pretty much see no banding at all.
5 stops – a slight bit with the Canon, maybe the barest hint with the other cameras, but pretty much gone.
What a waste of words!
I agree that your comment is :)
Don’t feed the troll! 😏
A sad, but true (and humorous), take on all the misinformation that gets spread around the internet and passed along as facts. And the next step are the people who read these “facts” and then dispense them in every fora/comparison and make it a hill to die on lest their preferred camera be seen as not superior in some manner.
That’s what worries me. This article, too, will be taken out of context and used in the brand war. People are already linking to this article bashing Canon, which is absurd, because the whole point here is that you need to do something crazy in order to see differences that don’t even matter. But I do feel glad to correct the record so prospective Nikon Z buyers don’t worry themselves over nothing.
I’m more worried about the pace, roadmap and doublets of mainstream Z-lenses than I ever was about irrelevant sensor banding under unreal conditions. If I have to lift exposure by 6 steps, there will be seen a lot more flaws in a picture than just banding.
It is great that we have sites like yours, with real analyzes that at the same time shows how much garbage is presented to us by sites like Dp……. and others.
Thanks so much.
A single shot for a test photo should show the truth. That’s pretty nasty. If you really want to see the truth, you should take many different photos.
Who shoots with five to six light levels underexposure? In real photography, the banding problem actually occurs much earlier. I had photographed the setting sun months ago, when a big dark bank of clouds was above her. On the photo, which was underexposed about 2 light values, many dark horizontal stripes pulled through the cloudbank. But on the next photo were no stripes, although I had not changed the settings of the camera. – The same happened to me once in an exposure in which candles stood behind a subject to be photographed. So the Nikon Z 7 already knows the problem with the stripes. The other manufacturers of mirrorless system cameras know it only longer :-)
The banding problem depends very much on how strong and at which angle light sources radiate directly onto the sensor.
Rainer, that’s a completely different issue, which we are currently working on reproducing with the same cameras above. The research results will be published later today or tomorrow.
The above is purely to demonstrate the so called “banding” when recovering 5-6 stops of exposure.
Well done on putting to rest this nonsense. (6 stops uggh). Good informative piece as usual. This never would have been an issue if a certain popular (why??) had done a proper unbiased comparison of mirrorless sensors like this. Thanks for that Spencer!
Interesting article. The banding IS present on a z7 converted to IR at 590 nm. I had one converted by Life pixel and then read a report by Kolari Vision, which actually did the same thing. And this banding doesn’t even involve the shadows.
I bought a Z 7 last September as finally the mirrorless camera as the one that finally had all the major and even minor features I wanted. I have yet to be disappointed…at all. No internet site is going to convince me to disbelieve my own experience.
I view a lot of the internet reviews as always having the potential to be unvetted, sponsored “fake news” because most of the sites that offer them are easily corrupted by money and vendors have the most to spend. This is exactly why I don’t use social media because their purpose is commercial no social.
Your site seems to be a refreshing exception. Thank you for “myth busting” the “fake news” supported by vendor bribes.
I guess, no proof but my understanding of human nature and competition, is that all the major mirrorless offerings are of high quality with minor differences and most users could use any of them equally well.
I’ve spent enough time on this; I think I’ll go out and take some picture because that is what it is all about.
+1, my Z7 is working just fine, if anything it is the numpty behind the camera (me) that causes the problems not the camera. When it gets to the point that I am underexposing images by 6 stops and then trying to make them look good in PP then maybe it is time to put the camera up for sale, collect my zimmer frame and toddle off to the photographers rest home.
Now off to take some pictures.
While all of you are arguing about banding let me just say this… it misses the forest for the trees. Like frogs in a pot slowly boiled to death because they can’t differentiate between small changes in temperature over big changes… you all fret over “bubbles” instead of real heat. The trouble with these raised exposures is their bad color. All of these images suck, banded or not!
You have all completely eaten the what manufacturer’s fed you: high density sensors that can see ISO 102,400. Yes, the weaker CFA’s of these cameras gave you the low light performance you craved, but the color is diluted and suffers from gross metameric failure. But don’t let me stop you… continue along the Xerox path this generation seems to be dedicated to.
Wow, gross metameric failure. What is this world coming to? Glad I’m in the elite minority with all the knowledge. Gnostics unite!
I have found serious banding issues in my Z7 with properly exposed images when shooting in silent mode under theater lights. Debunk all you want, the banding I see is so bad the images are worthless.
Yes I thought the whole issue was with silent mode. Or maybe just that much worse.
There are a few types of banding being discussed, which is why I don’t really like the word “banding” here – not specific enough. So, are you seeing low-level directional pixel noise like in the Canon image above? Or is your issue more about large shadow bands across the image, making for uneven appearances even at thumbnail sizes?
That second type of banding is a major issue with nearly all electronic shutters (just Google “electronic shutter banding”), and usually a much bigger problems than the issues covered in this article. I use the mechanical shutter any time that artificial light is in the photo for that reason. It’s not a good solution for something like theater, where you want to be as quiet as possible, but there are few other options.
You can engage “flicker reduction”, but I’m afraid that’s just diminishing the effect – it will be still visible. A good idea could be to try to find a shutter speed which is less affected. After all, it’s kind of a “frequency moiré”, and we could see that back in film days in pictures we took from a TV-set at a too short shutter speed.
Today we face a lot more high frequency types of lamps, be it LED, metal-halide, tungsten, incandescent tubes and so on. In my understanding it’s close to impossible for camera manufacturers to design counter measurements for a ll types of mixed light sources. A photographer should know about this traps, but we can’t do much against when shooting in low light conditions. One of the reasons I keep my D810 is it’s very silent mechanical shutter.
I was taken aback the first time I saw banding in the one of my shots having just started using the Sony A7III, my first mirrorless camera. I’d never seen or even heard of such a thing shooting Nikon and Canon DSLR’s over the years. My understanding is that it’s more prevalent when using the electronic shutter and less when using the mechanical shutter. Regardless, it does seem to something that all mirrorless cameras are capable of producing and no reason to switch from Nikon, specifically. There are definitely some good reasons to switch from Nikon to Sony or Canon, but banding isn’t one of them, ha.
Great article.
It also shows that some reviewers are biased due to their long relationship with a certain brand. And secondly, non of the reviewers I know are as knowledgeable as Photography Life in terms of the technical matters.
Keep up the great work guys!
Perhaps we should stop calling it a ‘banding problem’ and call it an under-exposing result! I have just put my Sony a7r III on the market after purchasing my Nikon Z7
They both produce excellent images but I simply preferred the way my Nikon Z7 worked for my type of photography! Everything today seems to be focused on pixel peeking and not the subject, composition and light which is what the art of photography is about! cough cough!!
Excellent Post.
The banding was blown out or porportion. I’m sorry if you are off that much and need to pull detail out of shadows that much you might want to adjust your photography skills.
Anyone who needs to underexpose by 5 to 6 stops to find a problem, has a problem. Does anyone actually use a photo that underexposed? Thank you for your cheeky introduction, showing that other camera makers have similar issues, which are ignored by other reviewers. This site is my go-to for camera reviews and other photography-related matters. I appreciate your balanced approach very much.
I can’t help but feel that for some reason, unknown to me, there is currently an online bias against Nikon among reviewers, and others. I see this also in online forums, even those dedicated to the Nikon Z cameras. I think some Nikon haters simply go onto these forums to spread their hate. I may be wrong, but I have seen too much of it to simply take it for honest appraisals. I wrote to a longtime reviewer and camera guide author, asking him about this ‘so-called’ banding issue, and his reply was much like yours. He felt it is a big todo about nothing but the ordinary, true of all mirrorless that depend on the sensor taking on a lot of additional responsibilities. It will be overcome by all camera makers over time. But still, we have the best cameras today, DSLR and mirrorless, that we ever had. And the Z cameras are top performers. Thanks for your honest article. Much appreciated.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Great article, really enjoyed it. :D
You can preview the exposure in the evf. That makes underexposing by 5 stops even less sensible.
Honestly, the Nikon showed the least banding, I think the Sony had finer or more compressed lines, making them appear less obvious but they’re no better. It would be interesting to see what they would look like on a solid color background.
Thank you for pointing out that the Sony A7 III shows line pattern noise, and reminding us that Canon’s sensors for the last several years generally have inferior dynamic range at low ISOs than their competitors. But “Cough, cough! Who underexposes images by six stops?? Ahem.” seems to imply there is no benefit in high dynamic range sensors, which I can’t agree with. Several years ago in Yosemite we were on the side of a steep valley, shaded from the afternoon sun by the ridge above. The valley bottom was a forest of dark conifers, but in the valley mouth was a vista with a waterfall in full sunshine. Then using a Nikon D90, I took my usual bracketed set, noticed the highlight warning flashing on the monitor for the waterfall and snow, reduced the exposure compensation, saw the highlight warning was still flashing, etc, and eventually lost the warning with -4EV exposure compensation! In the JPEG, the forest formed a solid black mass. I was delighted Photoshop Elements’ Adobe Camera Raw was able to recover significant detail, but would have liked to have done much better. I guess trying to retain colour in a setting sun within a landscape could lead to even more extreme dynamic range.
As for Nasim’s “ if a scene has that much dynamic range, most of us would be doing bracketing for HDR or luminosity masking anyway”, those Yosemite shots led me to try various free HDR programs, expecting to find something that would do a better job, but none were able to align the hand-held Yosemite shots. No doubt a better HDR program would have got the result I wanted. I’m sure HDR is a great work-around when your camera lacks the dynamic range to record what you can see in an extreme high-contrast scene, but I’d far rather have a camera that could capture enough detail in a single exposure for me to lighten the shadows to my taste when processing the image.
Perhaps banding should be only a minor issue if deciding whether to buy a Z6 or Z7 or not, but they’d be better cameras if they offered the cleaner, more usable dynamic range of the D750 and D850 (although I admit that the conifer foliage in the dark areas of my Yosemite shot would probably have camouflaged banding effectively). I hope reviewers will continue to publicise weaknesses such as these, to influence the manufacturers to try to resolve them. If it isn’t possible to avoid banding from on-sensor phase detection pixels through improvements to the in-camera image processors, perhaps other manufacturers should follow Canon’s route of dual-pixel AF.
Chris