Vertical Striped Noise evident at higher gains
 

In some of my shooting with the Sony V1U, I've noticed that at higher gains, there seems to be some patterned noise that gets progressively worse as the gain goes up. It's not too noticable when the camera is still or tilting vertically, but when panning from side to side it is quite noticeable as a alternating lighter and darker noise pattern running vertically all the way from the top of the frame to the bottom. The fact that the actual picture is moving across the noise pattern in a pan makes it stand out more, as if there is a veil of vertical stripes in front of the picture. There are probably 10-20 'stripes', maybe more.

The pattern seems diminish at gains less than 6 db, but is quite evident a 9 and 12 db.

I'm wondering if anybody else has seen these patterns. Again, to clearly see them you need to have a higher gain set and panning. The stripes make low light/high gain shooting less desireable. I'm wondering if it is a defect in my particular camera as I have not heard other V1U owners complaining of this, only that the camera is fairly good even at higher gains.

As an aside, I'm not entirely sure but it seems there is some type of static noise pattern (not striped) throughout the image, even at low or no gain. I haven't spent a lot of time studying it. I've only really been able to monitor in HD via the component outputs, which slightly soften the image, because of a problem in the HDMI to DVI output I have been reporting. (I only have DVI-input monitors, without HDMI). Yesterday when I was able to use my neighbor's HDMI LCD monitor it seemed that there were subtle but static lighter and darker areas or even pixel-sized noise that didn't change over time. Again it was much more evident when panning. It could have been another problem with his setup, but again I'm wondering if anybody else has seen this.

Thanks for any info an advice. This forum has been very useful to me.

Regards,

-Keith Moreau

Keith, I'm beginning to think it's a function of CMOS sensors. I see it on my FX7 under poor conditions and I also see it with my Canon HV10 (an HDV cam that uses a CMOS sensor). So I don't think there's anything wrong with your cam, it's the nature of the beast.