Color banding / posterization with my new Canon 6D

[Zuddybear]

Hi guys and gals, first time poster here!

The past week I've been working on a panorama project. I was, however, very displeased to see color banding in the sky. You can see it clearly in the photograph below.

The image is composed out of 11-12 separate images, all of them taken in the RAW format, and converted to TIF before stitching them together in the photomerge tool in photoshop. All of the pictures have been saved in 16-bit color depth. I got a Canon 6D FF system.

So, How do I avoid this? 😃

[hsbn]

is the original image underexposed? Do you see the posterization in each image?

[Zuddybear]

Hi, and thanks for replying!

The final image is pretty much how it came out of the camera. When you mention it, it might be a little underexposed. I checked the histograms for each photograph, and the histograms are cut on the low end. 

As for your second question, the posterization is indeed noticeable in each image.

Linking an example photograph from another panorama, with similar exposure:

[hsbn]

May I ask what was the ISO setting for these image? Lifting the underexposure sky will definitely introduce banding/posterization. It will be worst at high ISO compare to lower one. Since this is already captured so I think the only thing you can do is run selectiv noise reduction on the sky. In the future, try to expose to the right.

[Zuddybear]

They were all shot in ISO-100 in order to keep the noise down. Exposure wise, I haven't touched or edited the sky.

[TCampbell]

I'm starting to suspect this is really a display problem.

When I looked at this image for the fist time, I was on an iPad Air with retina display.  I could NOT see the banding you refer to -- no matter how closely I looked.

When I looked at this on my relatively older 27" iMac, I could *barely* see the banding -- but really had to scrutinize carefully to see it.   When I looked at this on my 27" Thunderbolt Display, I could not see the banding at all.

I think it's your monitor and not your camera.

[Zuddybear]

I think you might be right. I have an old and cheap Benq screen