Sky tones not smooth

Does anyone have any insight into why I may be getting these bands of tone on the sky in this image (see attached left image).

I've never had this before but it is happening on a huge amount of rolls I recently got developed all together.

Film has been scanned in 2 positions so it's nothing to do with the scanning glass.
scanner used is Epson V700. I get the same results with Epson Scan and Silverfast.

To make things more confusing. The right side image is from the lab that developed the film. I took it back claiming it was a development issue but their scan looks a lot better really.

Any help as to why I'm getting this issue on my scans would be helpful thanks!

It's a development issue. You can still see it in their scan, although not as much. I'm guessing they have some kind of smoothing profile or something in their scan to minimize the effect. I've had similar issues before with certain labs. I'd switch labs. That's what I did.

I've had similar issues before with some labs. The problem is, there's not a lot of money to be made developing film anymore. So most labs don't hire dedicated technicians with years of experience who really take their jobs seriously. They tend to hire minimum wage workers off the street who may or may not even have an interest in film, and show them how to use the machine. And they don't invest a whole lot of money in the upkeep of those machines or chemicals. As per the norm in today's maximum-profit-at-the-sake-of-everything-else culture, they're going to deflect any responsibility on their part, and push the blame elsewhere, rather than deal with the issue which would cost time and money to address. That's a large reason why I do as much on my own as I can. Not because it's cheaper or because it gives me more control, but because I just can't trust most companies to stand behind their work anymore.

That being said, there are still some good labs out there. My local lab does a good job with C-41 and E-6 roll film, and they do it pretty cheaply, so I'm lucky there.

The banding on the left to my eyes look more like how photos looked back when computers only had 8 or 16 bit colour, and not 24/32bit colour displays. My first thoughts would be to the amount of compression used in the file type. I see this photo is a .png file. Are the native photos in .jpg and you've taken a screen capture? if they are, I'd try saving with a higher quality, lower compression jpg and see if your issues disappear. Just a thought.

Yes that's also my experience. It's actually the color depth (bits/channel) setting in the scanner software or the photo editor.
You will often see the banding at a color depth of 8 bits/channel, not with 16 bits/channel or higher. Sufficient color depth is needed to see a smooth gradient.

You can test this in an editor by applying a gradient in the sky in a 8 bits/channel JPEG photo: you will see banding at this color depth. There is virtually no banding though when the color depth of the image is increased to 16 bits/channel beforehand.

I also agree with Ces1um about the PNG. The PNG format is suitable for files with graphics or drawings (large surfaces in one color or gray-value), to compress them efficiently. The JPEG is better suited for photo's with gradients and grain or noise.

I don't think it's a bit depth issue. I agree that PNG is a bad format for this type of stuff though. But I can clearly see the same lines in both scans on my calibrated monitor. Here's a B&W edit I did to the photo to better illustrate them. Plus, if it were a bit depth issue, you would see it in bands that correspond to the luminosity and saturation of the colors. The sky is darker in the upper right hand corner and lightens as you go outward. So the lines would be horizontal if it were a bit depth issue, but rather be semi-circular.

jim10219 said:

I don't think it's a bit depth issue. I agree that PNG is a bad format for this type of stuff though. But I can clearly see the same lines in both scans on my calibrated monitor.

Click to expand...

I don't believe it's our monitors, but his where the banding occurred. And if you look at your example in post #6, you can see that the bands are not in exactly the same places in both - which would seem to eliminate the actual negative as being the problem.

If it is a problem with the neg I’d say someone wiped it with a dirty sponge before drying it. The bands dont seem to step down from one tone to the next like banding does, it looks a bit of dark/light/dark streakiness to me.
What format is this, that might give us a sense of the scale of the bands.

From the edits Jim made it indeed doesn't look like normal banding, which normally has sharp transitions.

Perhaps still an artifact from the PNG compression. An easy test would be to scan the photo again with the same settings and then saving as JPG instead of PNG to see of the problem persists.

Wow went to bed and got all this great responses thanks guys.

So the image on the left was originally scanned as high res TIFF at 24bit, it’s only in png so Because I screenshotted the two images next to each other. The TIFF file definitely still has the same banding issue.

I’m very interested in Jim’s edit and will have to go back and try this on the original files. To me the banding is exactly the same on both.

The lab does dip and dunk so usually pretty good, not sure what’s gone wrong here, or how I’m going to convince them after their ‘reasonable’ scan.

Why would the png file format cause this? It is a lossless file format and shouldn't cause any compression artifacts. If anything, it is an overkill for a use like that.

connorgeoff, do you see the banding on the negatives?

Hello Uluru!
My first observation is that it is drying marks on the actual film. Scanning any which way you can, and saving to any file you desire should not result in artefacts except for the usual suspect of dust, hairs, blotches and other detritus easily cleaned up in post.

connorgeoff said:

Does anyone have any insight into why I may be getting these bands of tone on the sky in this image (see attached left image).

Any help as to why I'm getting this issue on my scans would be helpful thanks!

Click to expand...

You posted this in the 100% analog workflow part of the forum, so your question is likely off topic here in a strict sense.

To help you with a first diagnosis and really the only way to pinpoint if such problems were caused by development (analog) or scanning (digital post processing) you have to look at the actual negatives with a magnifying glass and check if the bands are visible there.

Either the banding is visible on the negatives, in which case the lab is at fault and we can further discuss the possible scenarios here.

Or it is not visible on the negatives, in which case this is a scaninng/digital PP issue and the thread should be moved to the appropriate part of the forum.

Yes, take a picture of the negative and show us. Hold it diagonally to rule out a directional, raster effect. A couple slightly different exposures will help rule out banding at color boundaries because the bands would move if it’s just that.