StanMac Loc: Tennessee

The lines aren’t in a perfectly straight line - there is a bit of barrel curvature to them. What does that imply?

Stan

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

It implies that either your or my eyesight is going.
They look straight to me.

JRD3 Loc: Richmond, VA

Longshadow, thanks for the thought.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

I do not think it is a camera fault issue. I think your timing with the point of the frequency cycle was perfectly timed.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

In the second photo, follow the uppermost and bottommost line from the left side. Both leave the frame in opposite directions (up and down).

Stan

FrankN Loc: Maryland, USA

Were you using silent (electronic shutter) mode? If so, this is a known problem with mirrorless cameras and LED lighting. I understand Nikon has fixed it on the Z8 and Z9.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Wow, I didn't notice the top left as I viewed the basic body of the image.
That's weird.

jayluber Loc: Phoenix, AZ

What does Nikon have to say about it?

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

I don’t know what the problem was but I’m befuddled as to why you’re using very extreme shutters speeds for subjects that don’t need it, forcing those high ISO’s.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

If you're referring to the fact that the stripes aren't exactly parallel to the edges of the photo and actually leave the photo at one point, that is probably due to lens corrections being applied somewhere along the line.

Red6

Those were my first thoughts also. There does not appear to be any action fast enough to require those shutter speeds. A shutter speed of 1/250, or 1/500 at the most, should be more than adequate.

In fact, I might theorize that the problem would disappear with a lower shutter speed and ISO. I suspect the cause may be some interaction between the shutter speed, selected shutter mode, high ISO, and the camera sensor. I would suspect this before thinking about interference from outside sources such as power supplies, etc.

Interference or electrical noise from lights, power supplies, etc. is usually quite broadband and would most likely show up as a static type noise. Wireless microphones or other devices might possibly cause some type of issue but I feel that is unlikely. Electronic devices today are usually designed to work in these environments and are tested thoroughly to make sure they are resistant (not immune) to such interferences.

Don, the 2nd son Loc: Crowded Florida

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

This sort of forensic work calls for an examination of the Exif data. Comparison of good vs bad would be illuminating (pun accidental). If you could get Nikon’s attention I would bet they would know. Was it raw or jpeg? The pin cushion distortion seems likely due to lens correction either in camera or post processing.

Befuddled was the reason I clicked on this post. I resemble that remark. I won’t click on a post with vs. in the title unless I was to laugh at idiots.

SalvageDiver Loc: Huntington Beach CA

In summary, there is nothing wrong with your camera.

For camera silent mode/electronic shutter,
“Banding occurs when your shutter speed is not synced up with the refresh rate/frequency of light. It happens when sensors that read an image line by line can't keep up with the refresh rate of the artificial lights.”

This is simply a phenomena associated with how CMOS camera sensors operate. It is called readout speed. sensors do not capture and readout all pixels simultaneously, but do so in a serial manner. When you have fast moving elements in a scene, the slow readout speed is responsible for what’s called “rolling shutter distortion”. It’s caused by the fact that most sensors fill each pixel serially, i.e. one at a time, so it takes a while to acquire a complete exposure. This is also the cause of banding under artificial lighting. Independent of shutter speed, typical times it takes to fully fill a sensor is longer than 1/30s.

The readout speed for the Nikon Z6 is 1/20s (14-bit) and 1/38s (12-bit). In silent mode, this is the time it takes to fill your sensor with data, independent of your shutter speed. Anything happening faster than that will resort in distortion or banding in the final image.

For incandescent or fluorescent lighting, fundamental operating frequencies are 60Hz or 120Hz. However, LED’s are integrated circuits and can operate from DC to well into gigahertz frequencies. Typical means for varying the perceived brightness of an LED is to drive it with a constant intensity pulse but vary the ON time for each cycle. The shorter the ON time, the lower the perceived brightness of the LED. This is called “Pulse Width Modulation” abbreviated as PWM. So operating frequencies for LED lighting isn’t constrained to just the lower 60/120Hz frequencies.

Many cameras have built in flicker compensation for 60Hz and some level of higher harmonics (120Hx, 180 Hz, 240Hz, …) but lighting operating at higher frequencies and not associated with 60Hz (or 50Hz in the EU) are unlikely to be compensated for. However, newer high-end sensors have higher readout speeds reducing, but not eliminating, the severity of the problem. The problem is finally eliminated with sensors with global shutters, i.e. sensors that fill all pixels simultaneously, but they are extremely expensive.

This effect that you are experiencing is a well known problem with many articles discussing this exact issue. Here are a couple of references to articles you might be interested in.

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/i-found-out-about-banding-due-to-shooting-in-silent-mode-the-hard-way

https://enthusiastphotoblog.com/silent-shutter-banding/


And for the geeks out there (like me), here is a technical article describing it in more engineering terms:

https://hamamatsu.magnet.fsu.edu/articles/readoutandframerates.html

Hope this helps
Mike

delder Loc: Maryland

Much sophisticated LED Lighting [Car turn signals INCLUDED] STROBE the LED & depend upon your persistance of vision to resolve as a steady light. This is done to provide bright light @ a lower temprature [Less Watt-Hours to LED]

You may need a much slower PHYSICAL shutter speed to resolve.
Film cameras with Curtain Shutters would evidence similar problems with unconventional lighting.