Inspiring

Answered

How to remove horizontal banding caused by LED lighting

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 28, 2018
12 replies
140038 views

Hi, does anybody knows how to remove horizontal banding caused by LED lighting when we shooted using silent mode with mirrorless cameras ?

does you know a method using Photoshop to do this? Or a photoshop or lightroom plug-in that works for this problem?

this is an example of the problem:

Picture was taken with a Sony A6300 digital camera.

Correct answer Trevor.Dennis

I was not aware of this affect. Do you know what causes it? Is some sort of artefact that happens with Mirrorless cameras and LED lighting panels?

It's not going to be an easy fix. I tried using curves, but it was tricking getting the layer mask to align with the darker areas.

The best I could come up with was slow and careful use of the Dodge and Burn tools. Set the strength really low (10%) and use a fully soft brush set to Midtones, and about the size of the dark bands. Then slow brush out the shadows.

I have pasted this in the same size you uploaded it

K

keil_4931

Participant

Hey! Yeah, that horizontal banding from LED lights is a pretty common problem, especially when shooting in silent or electronic shutter mode with mirrorless cameras like your Sony A6300. It happens because the LED lights flicker faster than the camera sensor reads the image, which causes those annoying bands.

One way to fix it in Photoshop is to use the Dust & Scratches filter along with some noise reduction:

First, duplicate your photo layer so you keep the original safe.
Then go to Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches. Try setting the radius around 3 to 5 and the threshold around 10 to 20. This helps smooth out the bands.
Next, go to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise to clean up what’s left.
If the photo looks a bit soft after this, you can add a layer mask and paint over the parts you want to keep sharp or just lower the effect’s opacity.

This usually helps a lot without messing up the details. Another option is to carefully use the Dodge and Burn tools at a low strength to lighten or darken the bands manually it takes a bit more time, but gives you more control.

Check out the result below!

Glenn 8675309

Legend

That looks pretty good. I'm lazy: I just used the remove tool and it did a pretty good job on what I did do.

W

wjsweenstr

Participant

I have had success using the Neat Video noise reduction plugin for video footage. It's algorithm seems to understand the banding pattern in still images as noise and is able to eliminate it with one click. neatvideo.com

T

Tiffany Katz

Participant

I had this happen to me during a poorly lit wedding ceremony with my Nikon Z mirrorless which I use for it's silent shutter and my prime lens large aperture. With all these things working for me, using a 1/200 shutter speed at ISO 1600 I got the same banding result as shown. I'm afraid that I may also have to spend an eternity fixing these. I couldn't even have used my own light source to fix this problem beforehand as it would have been in the way of a very cramped venue. Would love to see all the responses on this

D Fosse

Community Expert

There is no easy fix for this. You need to test shutter speeds in advance, prior to the event, and find a safe range outside of the LED flickering.

Or use the mechanical shutter whenever possible. On my Sonys I have the silent shutter on a very easily accessible programmable button, so that I can switch very quickly, without even taking my eye off the viewfinder. This way I can sneak in the mechanical shutter whenever the sound level allows.

Fixing this after the fact is doable, but very time-consuming. This is something an AI-algorithm could be really useful for.

A

AnthonyK

Inspiring

From Tim Grey's newsletter today: In addition to using the mechanical shutter rather than the electronic shutter when photographing a moving subject, you may want to use the mechanical shutter when photographing under artificial light to avoid potential banding in the photo.

So this does look like a camera issue related to the use of the electronic shutter. Switching to mechanical shutter might not always be an option, but it might be a possible solution in some situations.

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

Some cameras have flicker reduction built in.

Christopher J Photos

Participant

I found this article on the Sony website helpful as I was experience a similar issue when using high speed sync and fast shutter speed on some indoor food photography setups:

The Image Shows Yellow Horizontal Lines or Banding Effects | Sony USA

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00122281

Norman Sanders

Legend

Two questions regarding the original photography under these lighting conditions:

What is the effect of longer exposure?

Can this be resolved with camera burst and then, in PS, stacking aligned layers, smart object, then Layers > Smart Object > Stack Mode > Median?

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

The person in the foreground’s skin and the presumably wooden structure in the background seem to be affected differently for example, so unless the color data is still available I doubt a reasonably efficient solution may be available.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

c.pfaffenbichler wrote
The person in the foreground’s skin and the presumably wooden structure in the background seem to be affected differently for example, so unless the color data is still available I doubt a reasonably efficient solution may be available.

c.p. I thought that was probably down to distance, and multi-path (reflected) light averaging out the effect to some extent.

Dag, is all LED lighting DC, and thus is not going to pulse with mains frequency? What I don't think we know yet (unless I missed it) is if the LED lighting in question is household down lighters, or photographic LED panels? As far as I Know, both use DC. I have a 15A PSU I obtained for homemade LED light panels, and while this is definitely going to switch mode, I'm guessing it has decent smoothing on its output. This is the same thing that powers LED household down lighters.

I have admit ignorance about mirrorless camera shutters, and what sync speed issues they have. Here again, I'm guessing, but do they have leaf shutters? Does every lens have a shutter? That would certainly allow faster sync speeds, but I imagine there would still be a limit?

What I am trying to pin down here, is what might have caused this banding? The image appears to have been taken in lowish light, but lets say it used a 1/60th second. There are seven bands running across the image. How does that correlate with 50Hz mains? I'm not getting it, and would really like to understand.