Stripes, Banding and Purple or Green Blocking on Photos - Happens in Heat

[jmquig]

I'm an amateur photographer and I was using my Canon EOS Rebel T3 at Disney World this past week.  The majority of my photos turned out well, but later in the day around 4 pm I started seeing problems on the pictures. This was visible on the LCD viewfinder, and apparent on the photo downloads as well.

The issues included stripes on the photographs, banding on some pictures, and purple or green color blocking on the pictures.  I am so bummed because all the pictures from this time frame are ruined to various degrees. The third picture in this set of examples only has a minor stripe across the castle at top. After I noticed what was happening, I tried removing the battery, changing the memory card (which was brand new), reformatting the memory card in camera, changing lenses, deleting the settings, switching back and forth from AUTO to MANUAL... nothing helped.  I put the camera back in the bag, and after several hours it was back to normal.

This happened again two days later.  I suspect it has something to do with the Florida heat because it always happened later in the day, and after leaving it alone for a while it stopped.

Can anyone tell me what might be wrong and what steps to take for repair?  Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to salvage these photos?  I have been an amateur still-learning photographer for the past four years, but I have a degree in graphic design and very advanced at Photoshop and editing. I do not have raw files because I was trying to take so many in the day I wanted to "travel light."

[Peter]

Every fourth column that is affected? Do you have raw files?

[jmquig]

No unfortunately I just have JPGs.

[shadowsports]

@jmquig,

Thanks for posting many details.  I don't think its worth repairing. 

I see a T8i in your future. 

[rs-eos]

About the only way I was able to salvage the images (using the versions in this post) was to first Gausian blur with a value of at least 3.0.  Resharpen More a couple of times and scale down considerably.  Finally, convert to B&W and add a darkening curve to any regions of the image that were lighter.

Clearly you give up so much resolution and color, but it's at least something.

[jmquig]

Thank you. I will definitely try those suggestions!

[rs-eos · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, I don't think you can do any type of full recovery.  You could try experimenting in Photoshop to apply say selective Hue/Saturation adjustments to try to remove a bit of the color casts.   In theory, you could also try to lighten the darker green horizontal stripes by first making a selection with that specific color (but I believe you'll end up having to do a color range instead which will complicate things).

In terms of not capturing RAW, I don't think that would've helped since this really sounds like a hardware issue (see below).  But, you really should consider shooting say RAW + JPEG as that would give you a sort of in-camera backup.  If one capture becomes corrupt (e.g. file couldn't be written), you'd have the other format.  Also, higher capacity SDXC cards are now very inexpensive.

Finally, to the hardware issue... this really sounds like the camera's electronics are going bad.  Sometimes with older or faulty equipment, the longer the circuitry is on will lead to faults.   As you've found, when the camera was off for a while (circuitry allowed to cool), it then worked again.   You can contact Canon to see about sending in for repair and how much that may cost.

[Peter]

Too bad about no raw files. It seems like the same issue as "Weird stripes on 5D mark II raw". Google it.
That was possible to "fix" (the raw files, not the camera) in Octave but in that case the stripes affected the whole image.

[ebiggs1]

"This was visible on the LCD viewfinder, and apparent on the photo downloads as well."

This is a problem!   Sorry, but it's not a good sign that you are the issue on both the LCD and your computer. Did the camera get wet?  Even a little? A used T3 is probably less than $200 bucks so it doesn't leave much room for repair which I believe your needs.

[jmquig]

No I don't think it got wet anywhere. It rained on us slightly one day but I immediately put it in the bag to stay protected.

It may just be time for a new camera.  A new model would certainly be fun!