13 February, 2006
Nikon D200 Banding Issue Fixed
Nikon have confirmed the existence of a banding issue in some D200 digital SLRs, which have been the subject of much discussion in Nikon forums for the last few weeks.
According to their knowledge-base article, the banding “can become visible only in specific shooting conditions that include particular combinations of high contrast scene content, lighting, camera settings, substantial enlargement and the shooting environment.” Nikon claims that the problem is limited to early-production D200 cameras.
Basically, if you think your D200 has a problem you can send a sample image to Nikon, who will advise you on what to do next (usually the camera needs to be sent in for adjustment).
Ken Rockwell has written a page about the Nikon D200 Striping, Vertical Stripe, Banding and Corduroy Effect (all different terms for the same thing), with notes on how to reproduce it, how to avoid it, and why not to worry about it. Ken claims that the problems only really occur with badly-exposed images that should be deleted anyway, but that doesn’t account for photographers deliberately over-exposing an image in a bracketed series of exposure for later reconstruction in a high dynamic range image.
Digital Artform has a pretty comprehensive page about D200 banding, with links to many forum discussions and other resources.
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1 CommentOne Response to “Nikon D200 Banding Issue Fixed”
February 15th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
[...] Club members with Nikon D200s are urged to read up on the reported problems, test their cameras and, if necessary, contact Nikon to have the problem fixed. Nikon’s announcement, along with D200 banding articles from various web sites, can be accessed via this page at One Stop Under. [...]