How to Manage Silent Shutter Banding
With all the major camera brands now producing mirrorless cameras, more people can enjoy one of the key benefits of mirrorless: silent shooting. By fully utilizing an electronic shutter and without a mirror flapping up and down, cameras can be entirely completely silent. I’ve greatly benefited from the silent shutter on the Sony A7riii when shooting weddings. (The Sony A7riii + Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 is a fantastic wedding kit).
Most critically, I have used silent shutter of the Sony A7riii when shooting wedding ceremonies: the capability to shoot without any risk of interrupting the service with the noise of the shutter. For others, it also allows far more discretion when shooting candids or street photography.
All of the current generation full frame cameras – Sony A9, Sony A7rii, Sony A7iii, Nikon Z6, Nikon Z7, and Canon R are all equipped with silent shutter capabilities. For the most part, they can be expected to share the same limitations.
The Negatives of Silent Shutter
The first issue with fully electronic shutters is that due to the design of CMOS sensors, they are incompatible with flash sync. Flash sync limitations will be overcome in the future but flash cannot be used with silent shutter for now.
Though we tend to think of the digital age as “instant,” an electronic sensor actually cannot be read out instantaneously. Modern high resolution sensors have very slow readout speeds on most current cameras. Read out speed is actually slower than the effect of a mechanical shutter. At least this is true on most cameras: Of the current full frame mirrorless cameras, only the Sony A9 is equipped with much much faster readout. The Sony A9 electronic shutter still can’t be used with flash, but the fast readout generally removes the other limitations of silent shutter.
Except for the Sony A9, electronic shutters will result in rolling shutter distortion when there is action or motion in the frame. When photographing subjects in motion, there may be elongation or compression of the subject. Dpreview has an explanation of rolling shutter distortion which you can read by clicking the image:
When shooting silent shutter for street photography, take a look at what it did to the bus in the background of my image:
So, you can’t use silent shutter with flash. Except for the Sony A9, you really shouldn’t be using a silent shutter for shooting fast movement. Getting back to our wedding ceremony example, a silent electronic shutter can still be of great benefit except for one significant limitation:
Banding with Silent Shutter
Artificial light is not actually “constant” but has a frequency. In the United States and Canada, artificial light has a frequency of 60hz. (50hz through most of the rest of the world). Thus, at the fast 1/640 shutter speed above, combined with the slow readout of the electronic sensor, resulted in heavy banding across the image, essentially displaying the flicker of the light frequency as bands across the image.
This article opened talking about the great value of silent shooting on mirrorless cameras. Yet, we can’t use it with flash on any full frame camera. Except for the Sony A9, it can’t really be used for shooting action or motion.
You could replace your mirrorless camera with a Sony A9:
As shown above, shooting at 1/640 resulted in significant banding ruining the image on the Sony A7riii yet there is no trace of banding with the Sony A9 at the same shutter speed. The Canon R, Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7 have not yet been released (as of the writing of this post), but they can be expected to have the same banding issues as the Sony models.
So outside of the Sony A9, is the silent shutter worthless in artificial light? Fortunately, there are ways to predict, manage and avoid silent shutter.
Avoiding Silent Shutter Banding
First, if your shutter speed is sufficiently slow, in line with the read out speed of the electronic shutter, you won’t experience any banding. Jim Kasson measured the readout speed of the Sony A7riii electronic shutter speed at between 1/15 and 1/30, depending on compression and bit size. (Dpreview testing estimates the readout speed on the Nikon Z7 at about 1/15th of a second). Shooting with that range you should avoid banding, as in these examples:
But as I did my test, banding started to creep in as the shutter speed increased and got progressively worse. Here you can see it creeping it at 1/25 and 1/30:
Unfortunately, it’s not always practical to shoot below 1/25th of a second. Any movement by the photographer or the subject would ruin the image. Longer lenses would be especially difficult to keep steady at such slow shutter speeds.
Fortunately, it is possible to use faster shutter speeds and generally avoid significant banding. It’s a matter of matching the frequency of the light. Examine this series of images:
As you look at the above images, you should notice that the banding is far less significant in two of the images: At 1/60th of a second and 1/125th of a second. Banding is greatly reduced because these shutter speeds match the frequency of the light. Still not quite as perfect as the Sony A9 but banding is very faint and doesn’t ruin the image.
If you want to benefit from silent shooting in artificial light (in the USA and Canada), stick to shutter speeds slower than about 1/15th of a second, or manually set your camera to 1/60th and 1/125th of a second.
The Future
Camera makers are furiously racing to develop a usable global shutter, which would eliminate all the issues of rolling shutters. Even without global shutters, you can expect camera makers to utilize faster processors and improve the readout speed, as in the Sony A9. “Banding” is a 2018 problem and it will likely be eliminated in the next generation of camera bodies.
For now, if you want the maximum benefits of a silent shutter, buy yourself a Sony A9. [Only the Sony A9 will let you shoot continuously with continous autofocus at 20 frames per second in total silence, without significant concern for rolling shutter issues.] Fortunately, by intelligently selecting your shutter speed, you can still mostly avoid banding. You will get great value of silent shutter on any of the current mirrorless full frame cameras.
For wedding/event shooters, journalists, street photographers, etc, silent shutter is a game changing advantage of mirrorless cameras. You can help support this site, without any additional costs to yourself, if you use the following link to order or pre-order your mirrorless camera:
