Newton Ring issue with FE 16-35mm f2.8

[Pavan Kumar]

I am using sony a7r2 for a couple of months, the major issue I have while shooting night photos is I have weird circular formations in the sky portion of the image. I am a beginner any help would be appreciated to solve this.

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[Chrissie]

What your images have in common is, that the sky fades very gradually from the bright city atmosphere to the darker "outer space". To make this appear as a continuous transition requires more different shades of the same hue than your image processing apparently supports. Since you are in the realm of digital photography, what you would like to render as continuous transitions appears as more or less disturbing steps between different hues instead. I guess, you've been shooting those pictures as jpeg only. I would advise to shoot in raw, then export as jpeg. Since jpeg supports only 256 shades per primary color, while raw may support up to 16bits (2^^16 = 65.536) per primary color.

I assume (and now I'm in the guessing territory), that the raw converter can re-allocate unused color resolution from some primary colors to increase the color resolution (i.e.: refine the inevitable "steps") to the hues where it's most needed. Maybe someone else can clarify this a bit more ...

Hope that helps.

 

P.S.: I have the same lens and would definitely rule out "Newton's rings" as the cause for your complaint.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Chrissie
Re.: Newton's rings

[Pavan Kumar]

Thank you,

I always shoot in raw, but after editing in lightroom export it to JPEG, so any suggestions how I can avoid this?

[Chrissie]

The first thing that comes to my mind is: export to jpeg at the highest possible "quality" setting. That should considerably reduce the size of the rectangular jaggies at the boundaries between different hue steps, though not the steps themselves.

You may want to try exporting to tiff instead of jpeg, since tiff also supports high color resolution. At any rate, try an uncompressed format.

Please keep us posted.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Chrissie