is this normal?

if you look closely at this picture, there seems to be a lot of lines in the pixels. I have the Canon 7D and it's known to be noisy but are lines normal also? or am I just paranoid??

Could be the result of a few things:
- the raw converter used and settings to produce the jpeg or tiff
- the post processing on the jpeg or tiff
- the compression level of the saved final image

When you view the raw in DPP or LR or whatever, do you still see those lines?

I see it in the camera's playback

This looks processed. Did you raise the shadows in post?

Chet wrote in post #18702577
This looks processed. Did you raise the shadows in post?

^^
Exposure for the sky to be rendered with deep saturated color will usually mean that foreground is very significantly underexposed (getting close to detailless black, perhaps!) so the foreground had to have been brightened considerably relative to the sky being darkend significantly during postprocessing. Brightening the foreground a ton with increase the apparent noise in that part of the image in terms of the color luminance noise particularly.

that's exactly what I did. that is probably what happened.

The lines look like what's called banding: I found this could easily happen with older sensors when you were trying to raise shadows (you'd see noise and banding). As Wilt indicated an underexposed image area will begin to show noise if heavily processed (though new sensors like the 5D4 don't have nearly as much noise if raising shadows/underexposure at base ISOs). To mitigate noise and banding, you aim for getting most your exposure towards the right of the histogram (known as Expose To The Right). Also with a high DR scene (such as wanting to get contrast with both a sunset and dark foreground), the most straightforward thing is use of filters or having camera on tripod and exposure bracket (to later mask in over or underexposed layers).

anitaw2 wrote in post #18702573
I see it in the camera's playback

The camera gives you a processed JPEG, not the raw... So picture styles, JPEG quality, etc all play a part in that display.

davesrose wrote in post #18702606
The lines look like what's called banding: I found this could easily happen with older sensors when you were trying to raise shadows (you'd see noise and banding). As Wilt indicated an underexposed image area will begin to show noise if heavily processed (though new sensors like the 5D4 don't have nearly as much noise if raising shadows/underexposure at base ISOs). To mitigate noise and banding, you aim for getting most your exposure towards the right of the histogram (known as Expose To The Right). Also with a high DR scene (such as wanting to get contrast with both a sunset and dark foreground), the most straightforward thing is use of filters or having camera on tripod and exposure bracket (to later mask in over or underexposed layers).

^
Generality about the technique...

• It would be better to have exposed the entire frame as: Overall exposure +1EV, then in postprocessing pull back Highlights -3EV
  
• than to have done it as: Overall exposure -2EV, then in postprocessing push the Shadows +3EV