Firmware v1.2.0 seems to have solved a banding issue that was present in the Canon EOS R

Every time. Every single time a wide DR scene is shot on a Canon someone comes back with "...it's not THAT wide a scene." Like clock work. No examples of their own...but the Canon example just isn't good enough. DxO and DPReview said so!
...

I have not mentioned specifically Canon and I think that the modern sensors of all companies are more or less comparable in usable DR. One stop does not help in critical situations therefore I mentioned the 16-20 stops. Which no camera company delivers for the standard consumer/pro photography market as far as I know.
 
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Landscape, include sun, don't blow highlights, maintain realistic detail in shadows without helpful reflecting surface? Done.

Done, I might add, with a 2008 Canon DSLR with a single shot and no clever processing or masks or filters of any kind.

Now I am the first to admit I can find the limits of the DR of my camera, but I believe I could do that with any camera because they are all comparable. What I can also do is mitigate any perceived 'limitations' it has to get the shot I want regardless of the scene DR. I shoot real estate that no on the shelf camera can retain the scene DR in one shot, none, no Sony or Nikon or anything else, if I need more DR than I can capture in one shot I take more than one shot!

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Or if your camera was turned off. At the risk of derailing your pedantry, the point of the question was under what practical circumstances would the sun not be blown out. A 13-stop ND (e.g. solar eclipse filter) would result in the sun not blowing out, but of course everything in the image that wasn't the sun would be pitch black.
I would prefer to increase the full well capacity to 1 000 000 photoelectrons - I think this is the way to have data for all light levels. And it also helps to get a more precise image due to lower statistical errors. As physicist I always like to have the best data I can get.
 
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If you do not saturate the photosites of your sensor. With enough DR you could map the tones to that result - or if you have the right display medium. OLED might be one step in the right direction if the OS of your computer delivers precise data to represent the brightness levels ... or micro LEDs (sub-mm anorganic LEDs) which are non-organic and burn-in-proof but expensive (now). They are state-of-the-art in cinema displays.

A LEDs photon flux can be changed between 10 photons per second up to 10^12 photons per second should be possible resulting in a DR of roughly ridculous 25 stops ... theoretically.
EDIT: 10^12 = 1 000 000 000 000 is a rough estimate


Nice to see SOMEBODY HERE knows their optics and math!

Anorganic LEDs require some serious CMOS etching technology over a wide area for large displays, and the only system that can print out very large area high dynamic range colour micro-LEDs for display purposes is from Heidelberg Instruments:

Large Area Volume Pattern Generators
VPG+ 800, VPG+ 1100 and VPG+ 1400

And we are talking about tens to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of layout and etching gear!

Price-wise, it's actually CHEAPER to recreate those now defunct Pioneer Plasma Displays (which I STILL HAVE!) which outperform even OLED screens in terms of black levels and colour brightness. I have a few of the Canon $34,000 IPS reference monitors and a high end Sony BVM-series OLED broadcast reference display and I still like my 1080p Pioneer Plasma displays BETTER!

The ONLY price-sensitive system that is coming out that can exceed OLED in terms of dynamic range and colour rendition are vertically stacked Boron Nitride Nanotubes which are rugged enough to withstand long-term photon emissions AND reception AND still have the RGB wavelength emissions repeatability which make for great colour rendition!

I've seen a Boron Nitride display and at 65+ inches horizontally at 1000+ dpi, it was the finest 16-bits per channel RGB display EVER CREATED !!!

Th only problem is a stacked nanotube display takes MONTHS to create just ONE of them using MEM's based stacking micro-instrumentation AND right now that one single display was literally 25 million dollars U.S. of RnD funding! That said, with the coming ability to GROW vertically stacked nanotubes like trees in mere weeks or even days coming online within two to four years, it will mean Millions-to-One contrast ratios for 1000+ DPI displays at sub-$5000 prices. AND since dopants can be ADDED to Boro-nitrides for photon RECEPTION, it means we can COMBINE a stacked RGB emissive display with in-between photo-receptors so that entire screens CAN ALSO BE CAMERAS !!!!!

Imagine an 8K display that has inter-twined RGB display pixels and RGB SENSOR pixels on one single substrate! No CMOS camera with complex optical pathways needed anymore! Just screens that have micro-lensed nanotubes EMITTING and RECEIVING RGB light wave at the same time! Your ENTIRE smartphone display IS ALSO THE CAMERA !!!

That would OBLITERATE the DSLR and MILC camera system market in one fell swoop since computational imaging techniques can then be used to manipulate the incoming photons as we see fit since the ENTIRE display is a giant image sensor in itself in addition to being a display system!
 
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Landscape, include sun, don't blow highlights, maintain realistic detail in shadows without helpful reflecting surface? Done.

Done, I might add, with a 2008 Canon DSLR with a single shot and no clever processing or masks or filters of any kind.

Now I am the first to admit I can find the limits of the DR of my camera, but I believe I could do that with any camera because they are all comparable. What I can also do is mitigate any perceived 'limitations' it has to get the shot I want regardless of the scene DR. I shoot real estate that no on the shelf camera can retain the scene DR in one shot, none, no Sony or Nikon or anything else, if I need more DR than I can capture in one shot I take more than one shot!

Great shot! I don't expect to see anything comparable from the DRoners.


The KEY ISSUE for ANY photographer is CONTENT and absolutely NOT the camera it came from!

The following two shots, even though they come from a smartphone, with their mere minor shadow level lift editing and cropping, do they not symbolize a somewhat artistic interpretation of person's life?

"The Perfect Burger" and "Pretty Car" to me are NOT the mere assemblage of pixels taken by some $100 image taking device. They SYMBOLIZE a life I wish to attain and/or can enjoy right now! That is the essence of photography! The capture of a GIVEN MOMENT in our daily life! Who cares about banding or NOISE in our images, when YOU TOO can now enjoy the world's MOST PERFECT BURGER and a slice of the automotive high life!

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docsmith

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He said landscape work with the sun in the image - in that case you would like to have 16-20 stops of DR. And IMO he is right.
So, which still camera in regular use will give you 16-20 stops?

Really, if he prefers something for whatever reason, great. But my issue is saying you can't do serious landscape photography with the 5DIV and R, even with the sun.

the sun is blown out.
What's fun, is so is the sun in Michael Mavin's shots.....

I am not sure what camera he used for these, so they may not be perfect examples. In some other shots of landscapes with the sun in them, he was using the Canon RP. These, he didn't seem to specify. But, maybe these are not his "serious" shots.

This was with the Z7:

A few of mine, taken on 7D, 5DIII, and 5DIV (last one). This really isn't my style or what I typically shoot, so I am not trying to hold these up as something great. But, more to say, even a hack such as myself can take reasonable landscape shots with the sun in it with Canon gear. Even "old" Canon gear.

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Landscape, include sun, don't blow highlights, maintain realistic detail in shadows without helpful reflecting surface? Done.
Fail. Sorry, but the sun itself in your image is clearly blown out. Obviously, you need to be able to see sunspots on the surface of the sun and complete detail in the deepest shadows of the landscape, and in your case since you mentioned reflections you really should’ve used a circular polarizer to enable imaging of the underwater depths, where you should be able to distinguish the flounder from the sand after pushing the unlit ocean floor to daytime brightness. Face it, if you can’t do that then your image sucks. Just sucks.
 
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I wish they'd solve the issue on the 5DMIV. I shoot my city's fireworks every year. I've never experienced the same kind of banding like I get on the 5DMIV. It's some weird banding that I thought was only visible when trying to over expose it. But even in normal conditions, it's there. I found people on several different forums discussing this very issue and in each one, there'd be twice as many people acting like apologists. But I never had the issue with a t2i, t3i, or my 7D.
Frustrating to say the least and very obvious in landscape photos with areas of extreme light and dark such as my fireworks photos. I don't usually push the shadows on them because they're long exposures, only lower the highlights and occasionally, the overall exposure, which should actually help the situation.
 

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LSXPhotog

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I like Michael, but when he said he could finally recommend the EOS R to landscape photographers, I laughed. It's so ridiculous to imagine this being a factor.

My 5D Mark IV and EOS R have the banding issue described by Michael.

I've been shooting images professionally for over a decade and landscapes are one of biggest hobbies away from my normal work. My career was build on cameras much less capable than the 5D Mark IV. The Mark IV has a truly spectacular sensors for photographers that know how to actually take images and don't just shoot crap and try to save it in post. Sony sensors are more capable, and I often see many unskilled photographers boasting about their camera's performance because -for them- it might be a necessary crutch for their lack of skill.

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The banding issue was legitimately only a problem in a handful of images on the Mark IV over the past couple of years. I'm extremely satisfied with the EOS R as well and I look forward to testing if my banding is gone as well.
 
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I was quite shocked when I saw Tony Northrup's video last year, which mentioned the banding issue:

Even if you "exceed the limitations" of a sensor, you may not be able to recover shadows, but you should not see such a horrible banding. It really scared me away from even considering buying an EOS R. Banding is much worse than totally random noise, which is random in two directions.

Somewhere it was mentioned that the problem might be that some whole lines of pixels have to be used for auto focus. For me that does not sound like a good idea at all. I do not want whole lines skipped and interpolated by software. Each pixel should be used to capture light that actually appears on the final photo. Unfortunately even modern DSLRs to that to maintain auto focus for video and live view. That is very concerning for me. Rather than losing pixels on the sensor I would get rid of video and live view.
 
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koenkooi

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Somewhere it was mentioned that the problem might be that some whole lines of pixels have to be used for auto focus. For me that does not sound like a good idea at all. I do not want whole lines skipped and interpolated by software. Each pixel should be used to capture light that actually appears on the final photo. Unfortunately even modern DSLRs to that to maintain auto focus for video and live view. That is very concerning for me. Rather than losing pixels on the sensor I would get rid of video and live view.

Discarding autofocus pixels is how Sony sensors work, not how Canon DPAF sensors work. So that isn't an explanation for banding on the 5D4/R.
 
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jolyonralph

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So the guy compared two cameras with different firmware rather than comparing the SAME camera before and after (NOTE: I can't watch the whole video right now so maybe he did later, in which case it's all good).

That doesn't prove anything on its own if the issue is to do with quality control on the EOS R sensor.
 
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Unlikely. That's only 20 stops of DR.
You are right - that is NOT all light levels but I think the DR of the eye-brain-system is something like 16...18 stops with the same setting (retina sensitivity/sensors and iris aperture setting). By the way it is less than 20 stops due to noise floor.

Another factor contributing to DR and often forgotten is that shooting at ISO 5 and below is rarely feasible.
I am shure full well capacity doesn't mean to shoot always at ISO 5 - it helps to conserve very high highlights (high contrast scenes, e.g. macro in contra light, deep forest in contralight) at ISO 100 which are always overexposed if you use a photographically correct exposure of the main subject. And ISO 5 would be helpful as an option to (1) open the aperture or (2) increase exposure time without additional devices (ND filters).

If memory serves well the classic 5D has something like 70 000 photoelectrons full well capacity mainly supported by its relatively large photosites (~ twice the area of 6D/EOS RP). The DR is limited by its higher noise floor but that camera records very precise brightness levels if you expose right - in my eyes the images look very clean.
 
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So the guy compared two cameras with different firmware rather than comparing the SAME camera before and after (NOTE: I can't watch the whole video right now so maybe he did later, in which case it's all good).

That doesn't prove anything on its own if the issue is to do with quality control on the EOS R sensor.
He answered this @ 2:06 in his video: He updated the camera with the older FW to the current version and the banding issue was resolved.

Are you too one of those who does NOT like these video only things where you need a lot of bandwith to get some bits of information? - IMO text rules :) But maybe I am too old for this modern "life".
 
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