Hi all,

My early D200 exhibited "long" banding (corduroy striping) along the bottom
and top 1/4 of the frame. It returned from Nikon yesterday perfect (after
having had "tiny" (their words--in Japanese)) parts replaced. So I conclude
that they have solved this problem, and can unhesitatingly recommend the
camera to those interested, at least insofar as the banding issue goes.

I ran across a way to view this banding very clearly in looking at some of
my older images--purely by accident. I happen to have ACDSee 6.0 installed.
I opened one of my jpgs (it opened to a default 20 % size in the editor).
This particular image was extremely underexposed--almost completely
black--in large part because of bright light sources, but any very
underexposed image would do. I then went into the editor and raised the
gamma and increased the contrast. To my surprise, the banding became quite
prominent--very easily visible even at 20% in the areas of the image where I
knew there to be banding problems from painstaking review of many images.
The banding pattern was consistent from frame to frame, and was entirely
absent on images made after the repair.

Interestingly, doing the same routine in PS does not bring up the banding--I
think there is a different algorithm at work for interpolating pixels for
the size on screen. Since the bands were much wider than they actually are,
I assume that ACDSee interpolates the pixels in such a way that several
bands are "clumped" together, and a regular interference pattern of clumps
of dark bands and light bands are displayed at 20% magnification. I have not
checked whether larger or smaller magnifications exhibit this effect, but it
is quite clear at 20%.

Just thought those of you with D200s who are worried about this might find
this information of use.

Toby