I emailed a report of the problem to Pentax Canada yesterday and received a nice reply today from someone in their Digital Support area.
He said... > I have not received any other inquiries regarding banding on the *ist > DS. While it is possible that others have experienced it, they may not > know what banding is. > > I personally have not noticed "Banding" on any of the 1000 + images that > I have taken with my *ist DS sample. After receiving your e-mail I took > an additional 150 sample images with ISO ranging from 800 - 3200. I > took sample photos with my subjects in a dark background, as well as > photos of the bright sky in wide angle, mid range and telephoto. > However, after examining them I have not found banding on any of my images. > To the best of my knowlegde banding will occur on ALL digital SLR's. > However, some might exceed the industry standard. > > I have also read that some MEDIA TYPE cards will cause banding. > Therefore, it's possible that this case of banding is caused by your digital > media. He went on to ask me for details of the camera settings, and for a sample image which he would pass onto Pentax Japan for their review. I thought this level of support was pretty impressive - makes me feel that they care about my problem and the quality of their product. I mentioned the various opinions I received from members of PDML (thanks!) and gave him the URL for the archives. I also sent him an image and related camera settings info. I'll be sure to let the list know when/if I hear anything further from Pentax. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred Widall, Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/~fwwidall ----------------------------------------------------------------------
