1Ds Banding?
I've just discovered what I think is a problem with my Canon EOS 1Ds. Images that are dark to begin with have the lower half (in a horizontal image) lighter than the upper part. The two images below illustrate this. The images were shot in the vertical format, hence the lighter area is to the right part of the image. This is a crop of the full frame. The left image in each pair is as it comes out of Capture One, the right image has been lightened a bit with curves to accentuate the problem. I've tried converting raw images with Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Canon's software. All give essentially the same result. I am processing the Capture One images at 16 bits. If I let the dark areas go black, the problem goes away, but I lose the shadow detail.
This looks to be a problem with the camera. Has anyone else had any experience with this kind of thing. If you have any advice, please let me know by email or respond to my topic in the Luminous Landscape forum.
Update: August 2004
Several people suggested I contact Canon's Factory Service Center. I did so and they had me send the camera in to them along with a sample print showing the problem seen above. They checked out the camera and "Replaced CMOS, adjusted CMOS sensor, shade, white balance, color matrix, cleaned VF, mirror and checked all functions." Their words, not mine. I don't even know what some of it means. It took about 10 days including shipping both ways. I haven't been back to Monument valley (yet!) so I haven't tried the exact same pictures, but I have seen no evidence of this problem recurring. A bonus was that the sensor was completely free of dust when I got the camera back.