G10 has ugly vertical lines on the LCD

[gadameilin]

screens when shoot street lights during the night. Canon told me it's normal.

[jwcdds]

As long as it's not in the final image, then it's fine.

As far as I know, this seems to be a weakness/property of using the LCD as an electric view finder. My 5 year old Canon Pro1 did the same back then, something about extreme contrasts throwing off the way the image is displayed during live view. But it doesn't show up in the final output image once you take the photo.

[PicBug]

Ditto with G9. I didn't think to wonder about it as they didn't make it to the image itself, but they are distracting while shooting!

[birdfromboat]

my brand new g10 does the same, it requires a major contrast of a narrow, bright light source against a dark background, but the vertical 'bands' do not make it into the image file. Just a reminder that the viewscreen is working as fast as it can to keep up with all the info the sensor is throwing at it, while the image processor just sits and waits for the click.

[jkdurden]

Mine does the same thing...I haven't noticed any adverse effects. It's just what the G-series screens do in high contrast light situations.

Don't worry...keep clicking!

[Bernoulli]

It is the CCD, not the screen or the lens. The way those chips work is that light is converted to an electrical signal at each pixel. After exposure, the electronics reads the image column-by-column across the image, no matter if the exposure is from taking the picture or just viewing the image on your screen while you're getting ready to click.

If there is a lot of light on some pixels, the little capacitor that stores electric charge for that pixel will overflow and bleed charge up and down the vertical electrical connection used to read out the pixel's charges. It's a common, and annoying, characteristic of CCD's. I don't know if CMOS sensors do this, but CCD's do for sure so I'm guessing Canon cameras are CCD's.

The reason you don't see it on the final picture is that, when you expose, the camera is more careful about calculating exposure and the pixels don't oversaturate, at least no so badly.

In the early days of using CCD's in astronomy, we used to see these narrow bright bands all the time on bright stars until CCD's got better (the pixels got more dynamic range). The bands would be horizontal or vertical depending on how the CCD and its electronics were oriented.

So not to worry, it's just something CCD's do, and it shouldn't show up in the final image.

[birdfromboat]

wonderfully explained. thanks

[Bernoulli]

I just bought a G10 last week and I'm having lots of fun with it. The wife and I are going to Mexico for spring break and I didn't want to carry around $3k of body and glass which says "rob me!".

I'm still exploring its capabilities, but it's a great little camera, especially if you stick to RAW and ISO 100.

I did notice the banding on the viewscreen when I was shooting at night with nearby street lights.

[ambroseliao]

The video streaking can be eliminated with a polarizer filter. I've got a sample that I took in my kitchen where I'm rotating the filter during this short clip. You can see the streaking appear and disappear gradually. Try your G with a polarizer. You'll be surprised how well it works!

http://ambroseliao.googlepages.com/MVI_2079.AVI

Ambrose