3 The M3 Has An Amazing Camera-

[Dale D]

In Miami, we have entered our hurricane season and summer. Summer is our worse weather! A typical day will open with blue skies and sunshine but by noon, the sun has heated everything up and big clouds appear, and then a torrential tropical rainstorm! We have had many inches of rain and flooded streets. So the point is, we all try to get out of the house early for our activities and hope to get back before the storms. I went out this morning to try shooting some panoramas with my new M3, as well as some mid telephoto shots. I got a lot of material for a short film , but here are some samples. The panos are all manually shot. The white domed building is the Florida Marlins Baseball Team Stadium with a movable roof. They are playing in Houston today so nobody was around to bother me. There is some banding in the sky in the 21 image shot.

All images were processed in Adobe Photoshop CC2022, with use of the masking tool to develop and edit the sky separately from the foreground, and the masking tool brush for selective shadows in the skyline buildings, and under the bridge.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Nice job Dale. but what is going on with the banding, is this something you can edit out using the lumination keys.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain < Land on the Water.

 

[Dale D]

Nice job Dale. but what is going on with the banding, is this something you can edit out using the lumination keys.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain < Land on the Water.

I do not understand why I get banding in some sky images. I try to go really light on these three sliders in ACR but I think that is where it comes from.



.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I do not understand why I get banding in some sky images. I try to go really light on these three sliders in ACR but I think that is where it comes from.



.View attachment 149910

Ok < So what I use to get that smooth sky is just these two sliders in Lightroom.
This was a game changer on your picture but you can dial in as you wish.


This will take out the noise and the banding nicely, dont worry about going to far
as you can dial the detail back in with the Clarity slider.



When you shoot a picture with some real detail in it , you can use that to focus in the Clarity and the luminance as well an the result works on both the sky noise as well as the focus point of detail as well adding to the depth and detail .





Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water

 

[Dale D]

Ok < So what I use to get that smooth sky is just these two sliders in Lightroom.
This was a game changer on your picture but you can dial in as you wish.

View attachment 149911
This will take out the noise and the banding nicely, dont worry about going to far
as you can dial the detail back in with the Clarity slider.

View attachment 149912

When you shoot a picture with some real detail in it , you can use that to focus in the Clarity and the luminance as well an the result works on both the sky noise as well as the focus point of detail as well adding to the depth and detail .

View attachment 149916



Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water

I guess I'll just have to tweak it a bit more. By the way- I shot this at 7x and found it lacking in sharpness. I carefully focused before shooting it. Even your fix is soft.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I guess I'll just have to tweak it a bit more. By the way- I shot this at 7x and found it lacking in sharpness. I carefully focused before shooting it. Even your fix is soft.

Was not aware this was shot at 7 X zoom so that explains the initial softness.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain.

 

[Dale D]

Was not aware this was shot at 7 X zoom so that explains the initial softness.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain.

Yes- well so much for the 7x.To me, it is useless. I am used to having a long lens with auto focus just "snap" into focus. I frequently rent there Nikkor 600mm f/r4 and the auto focus does just that! Here's an example. I had less than 10 seconds to shoots bird before it flew away. Lilac Breasted Roller-Botswana.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Yes- well so much for the 7x.To me, it is useless. I am used to having a long lens with auto focus just "snap" into focus. I frequently rent there Nikkor 600mm f/r4 and the auto focus does just that! Here's an example. I had less than 10 seconds to shoots bird before it flew away.

Beautiful capture, I do agree the 7x Zoom is for isolated use and taking panos is not one of them.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

 

[DanJ]

Nice job Dale. but what is going on with the banding, is this something you can edit out using the lumination keys.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain < Land on the Water.

I believe the banding is from not having enough picture information in the sky, ie, underexposed.
When you try to lighten areas that are underexposed they might have only three or four levels of different density. Thats what it looks like to me.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I believe the banding is from not having enough picture information in the sky, ie, underexposed.
When you try to lighten areas that are underexposed they might have only three or four levels of different density. Thats what it looks like to me.

So just to clarify, the original picture did not have the banding but when it was edited it kind of broke ?
Or are you saying the banding was right from the first shot?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain

 

[Dale D]

I believe the banding is from not having enough picture information in the sky, ie, underexposed.
When you try to lighten areas that are underexposed they might have only three or four levels of different density. Thats what it looks like to me.

I kind of doubt that reason. Here is another image without banding using the same exact settings, processing, etc. This one is a beauty, if I don't say so myself.

The thread is not about banding anyway! If I had not have pointed it out, I doubt it would hav even been noticed.

 

[Dale D]

So just to clarify, the original picture did not have the banding but when it was edited it kind of broke ?
Or are you saying the banding was right from the first shot?

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain

YES! There is something in the way I am processing some of the images that produces this. Not all the time. I have struggled with this for many years. I'd say that 95% of my sky images do not have this. I think it is when I misbehave and overdo the DEHAZE or the CLARITY slider. Here is another image taken with the same settings, and processing without any defects whatsoever.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

YES! There is something in the way I am processing some of the images that produces this. Not all the time. I have struggled with this for many years. I'd say that 95% of my sky images do not have this. I think it is when I misbehave and overdo the DEHAZE or the CLARITY slider. Here is another image taken with the same settings, and processing without any defects whatsoever.

So this picture of the sky you just posted is not good for me, I see a lot fragments ?
Did you mean to post another picture maybe. ?

 

[Dale D]

So this picture of the sky you just posted is not good for me, I see a lot fragments ?
Did you mean to post another picture maybe. ?

View attachment 149943

OMG- That's awful! The original is not at all pixilated like that.

 

[JoelP]

Dale - nice panoramas!

Mach banding is a digitization error. There are I sufficient levels to create a smooth transition in challenging things like sky. Did you use an ND filter for this bright day to optimize your exposure range? Did you use dLog to extend your bit depth? If so, which LUT was used to linearize the gamma?

 

[Dave Maine]

The problem begins with the 7x digital zoom. Any digital zoom is not really a zoom at all. It is simply a crop of the existing image. It throws away more than 80% of the sensor data. You have exactly the same problem cropping 7x in post processing.

Camera manufacturers have been advertising digital zoom for years to unsuspecting purchasers. No pros that I know use it. They put up with considerable inconvenience to cart around heavy, awkward zoom lenses that are required to get high quality images. Making a zoom lens light enough to be carried by a small drone is difficult and expensive.

 

[Dale D]

Dale - nice panoramas!

Mach banding is a digitization error. There are I sufficient levels to create a smooth transition in challenging things like sky. Did you use an ND filter for this bright day to optimize your exposure range? Did you use dLog to extend your bit depth? If so, which LUT was used to linearize the gamma?

Firstly, I am indebted for you comments. Please explain MACH BANDING. I've been using Photoshop all my life and this is the first time I've heard this term. Yes, I know about banding, but not Mach banding.

To answer, I used the DJI M3 ND16 Filter, the image was shot on AUTO, and the videos (to come shortly) were shot and edited in Photoshop, including individual processing of the sky with the masking tool.

The videos (to be submitted soon) were shot in DLog and the DJI LUT offered with the new M3. Of course, no LUT was used for these still images.

I personally believe that I moved either one of these ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) sliders too much -TEXTURE,CLARITY, DEHAZE. Of these, I believe the dehire is the one that needs to be most judiciously used.

 

[Dale D]

The problem begins with the 7x digital zoom. Any digital zoom is not really a zoom at all. It is simply a crop of the existing image. It throws away more than 80% of the sensor data. You have exactly the same problem cropping 7x in post processing.

Camera manufacturers have been advertising digital zoom for years to unsuspecting purchasers. No pros that I know use it. They put up with considerable inconvenience to cart around heavy, awkward zoom lenses that are required to get high quality images. Making a zoom lens light enough to be carried by a small drone is difficult and expensive.

Thanks for that Dave:

Truer words were never said. Agree 100%.

Having said that, I must admit my most frequently used lens is a 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor zoom lens. It is what we all call, a "walking around lens." I have shot thousands of images on it, as well as thousands of timelapse sequences. For the purposes of display (e.g.: CRT screens) it is perfect for me. I am not a photographer who makes large enlargements for wall hangings. When I am traveling, it is difficult to carry a lot of prime lenses, as well as the expense of prime lenses.

Dale

 

[JoelP]

Firstly, I am indebted for you comments. Please explain MACH BANDING. I've been using Photoshop all my life and this is the first time I've heard this term. Yes, I know about banding, but not Mach banding.

To answer, I used the DJI M3 ND16 Filter, the image was shot on AUTO, and the videos (to come shortly) were shot and edited in Photoshop, including individual processing of the sky with the masking tool.

The videos (to be submitted soon) were shot in DLog and the DJI LUT offered with the new M3. Of course, no LUT was used for these still images.

I personally believe that I moved either one of these ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) sliders too much -TEXTURE,CLARITY, DEHAZE. Of these, I believe the dehire is the one that needs to be most judiciously used.

What people call banding is actually called Mach banding in the imaging industry to distinguish it from other artifacts. I think the reply that you saw about the loss of data in the 7x zoom is the most reasonable explanation since these were not frame grabs from video with your main camera. Still, I think an ND filter can help by not getting to the extremes of the sensor range.

 

[Dale D]

What people call banding is actually called Mach banding in the imaging industry to distinguish it from other artifacts. I think the reply that you saw about the loss of data in the 7x zoom is the most reasonable explanation since these were not frame grabs from video with your main camera. Still, I think an ND filter can help by not getting to the extremes of the sensor range.

Thanks for that!
The panos were not shot with any zoom whatsoever.
This thread has turned into a discussion about banding. I wish people would actually comment on the scenery. Just sayin'.