Quite Embarrassed to Say the Least

Hello, Nikonites!

I am a newby here.... Been shooting for a couple of years ... Really enjoy it more as a personal hobby .... Had a portraiture business, didn't make any money ... go figure .... got into debt, got out of debt .... just bought a D700, used camera, with 2,010 or so acutations on it .... LIKE NEW, beautiful ...

So ... here's the embarrassing thing:

I'm sitting in the living room, watching TV, and decide .... I'm going to take pictures of the TV .... We happen to have a 70", so it fills up the screen in my camera, quite well from where I'm sitting ...

And I figure, okay, let's kick up the ISO a little .... and shooting ... and increasing the ISO, and all the sudden I see this very unpleasant black band running across the image ... AND in different places each time I take a snap ....

I thought, "Geeeez ..... that's weird ....." because I had purchased a D800 couple of weeks back, and returned it BECAUSE of the black band running across the screen...

I also realized it would start doing this around 1/500 of a second ... and start thinking, "Hmmmm ... I wonder if the mirror is lagging or something?

Well ... to say the least, I drove 45 minutes BACK to the camera store thinking something wrong with my camera ....

The guy says, "You can't take pictures of TV's or computer monitors becase the refresh rate can't sync with your camera and that's why you are getting the band ....

Surely .... I thought the guy was nuts .... so I asked him to pop a lens on my camera and that I would show him .... guess what ... NO BAND, because I was taking pictures of things in the store ...

So .... very weird I have to add .... very weird ...

But, the guy said, if you wanna take picture of TV,drop the shutter speed to around 1/60th.

To say the least .... I was quite embarrassed. I spent tons of time looking for the banding issue on google .... and it was all pointing to flash and sync speed .... and of course ... that didn't apply to my situation ....

Ughghghghgh....

But .... I found out that the camera only has 2,000 some odd actuations .... and the guy said it was like brand new.....

So .... I'm a happy Nikonite again.

Tim

In TV the screen is made of of 30 frames a second of interlaced lines and lots of hidden info inside that. So even at 1/60 you could get garbage. Try 1/30 sec.

WOW! Thanks for the quick replies... In regards to the TV, I was only taking the picture to "try out" my new, used camera .... and when I saw the results ... I was very disappointed ..... ONLY because I'm an idiot! I was really ripping NIKON a new one inside my mind .... But, after I realized it was my error ... I was totally relieved, and said a bunch of nice things about NIKON.... to help make me feel better ...

I was taking pictures at a pier once and every time I took a photo there was a band showing up at various places in the picture.



Those Salvation Army guys get everywhere.
Oh dear, I'll get me coat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrGhC3J8SHE

I can certainly sympathesize about the portrait biz. It is very difficult to make a living wage doing independent professional photography today. Everyone wants professional quality work but they want to pay Walmart prices for them. And the problem with that is there will always be some dolts who are willing to charge Walmart prices. Of course their work is on par or even below par with what you would expect from a Walmart photo studio but you get what you pay for, caveat emptor. Time is money and our equipment is not cheap. It was even worse back in the film days because in addition to your time and having to amortize your equipment, studio, etc into your prices, you had to pay for film and processing (and the postage to send it) as well as proofs and THEN the final prints. Digital has cut down a lot of the overhead, to be sure, and enabled clients to see their proofs the same day, but the fact remains that if you have a studio, it costs you money to keep the lights on, and you still have to pay for what can be very expensive equipment. I have a superb Canon Pixma 9000 printer which will print amazingly excellent prints up to 13"x19" but anything bigger than that I have to send out. I do all my own printing on stuff that is smaller than that. Still, I do it mostly for fun and some extra pocket change, but have a REAL job to keep the lights still burning. I would not want to work THAT hard to make the same money I make at my job. In a town my size I am not sure I could even do it.

What was wrong with your camera? That's weird! Did it do that all the time OR on various shutter speeds?

Tim King said:

What was wrong with your camera? That's weird! Did it do that all the time OR on various shutter speeds?

Click to expand...

If the time the shutter is open is longer than the time it takes for the tv to refresh, the black band will not register, however if the shutter speed is open shorter than the refresh rate of the TV, it will capture that band between two refreshes.