View Full Version : A Rolling Shutter Issue?


Bruce Ostrout
July 29th, 2008, 03:07 PM
I have noticed on a few shoots under flourescent lighting I will get several thick amber colored vertical bars crawling up the screen. On two occasions with a Z1 in a room with flourescent lighting I noticed the WB level pulsing to an amber then blue. At first thought when this occurred on both the Z7 & Z1 I thought it might be the LCD wigging out, but the effect occurs on tape.

I am thinking this issue is the same on both cams but looks like bars on the Z7 because of the rolling shutter. Does anyone else see this and know how to remedy it? Shift to an alternate shutter angle....?

Bill Pryor
July 29th, 2008, 03:11 PM
You're not shooting with the auto shutter and auto white balance on, are you? That might cause the problem.

John Knight
July 29th, 2008, 04:42 PM
Page 71:
Is your FLICKER REDUCE set to "ON"?
Have you tried experimenting with ECS FREQUENCY?

Bruce Ostrout
July 29th, 2008, 05:01 PM
You're not shooting with the auto shutter and auto white balance on, are you? That might cause the problem.

No, but I might have been at a shutter speed other than 1/60. I will have to see if i can repro under controlled conditions. I might post some footage.

Bruce Ostrout
July 29th, 2008, 05:03 PM
Page 71:
Is your FLICKER REDUCE set to "ON"?
Have you tried experimenting with ECS FREQUENCY?
It is set at whatever the defualt would be. I have not messed with ECS frequency.

Terry Brown
August 3rd, 2008, 04:19 AM
Our Z7 has just gone back under warrenty to have this problem looked at.

We have both a Z7 and S270 and the banding "striation" issue was incredibly strong if we over exposed the aperture to allow for backlight etc. I sent a still to Sony and they said that it does look like the Z7 is faulty.

We could not recreate the exact same problem on the S270, however I was editing some HDV footage this morning, filmed with the S270 under high pressure mercury lighting and there does seem to be an issue.

The aperture was opened slightly to compensate for the fact that the presenters were dressed in white coats with a predominately bright plain background and I have noticed a very faint striation.

It's so faint as to be virtually unnoticable during normal viewing, but if you speed it up you can see bands moving down the image.

Shutter was switched off and I will check about the flicker reduction, I do know that with the Z7 we double checked anything that could affect the shutter.

I will experiment with the S270 and get back with an update.

Laurence Kingston
August 3rd, 2008, 10:57 AM
I have exactly the same effect when I shoot under fluorescent lights and fast forward through the footage. I can't see it though at normal playback speed so I didn't worry about it.

Terry Brown
August 12th, 2008, 02:49 AM
Hi Everyone,

Looks like this was my bad and no one at Sony realised it before asking me to send back.

Probably like many people that have been making videos for many years, I only read the bits of the manual refering to things that were new to me on this camera. I presumed that the shutter was either ON or OFF!

What I missed entirely is that the Z7 does NOT have a Shutter OFF setting, it is either Manual or Automatic.

And because I had the Data Display option in menu switched off there was no indication that the shutter speed was automatic.

So from now on this will always be in manual with the speed set to 50FPS unless we need to adjust it to reduce flicker.

Seems a bit of a silly setting to me (the S270 does have ON, AUTO and OFF settings).

But oh well - I might stop blushing by the end of the day. Other than that the Z7 is awsome!

Michael Poole
November 30th, 2008, 04:55 AM
Could it be rolling shutter a cmos chip problem i have heard that Cmos chip suffer from rolling shutter when paning and change of light more so than 3ccd camera's



I have exactly the same effect when I shoot under fluorescent lights and fast forward through the footage. I can't see it though at normal playback speed so I didn't worry about it.

Aaron Lucas
December 1st, 2008, 06:24 PM
Could it be rolling shutter a cmos chip problem i have heard that Cmos chip suffer from rolling shutter when paning and change of light more so than 3ccd camera's

Did you read the post above? This issue has nothing to do with the use of rolling shutter on CMOS sensors.

Hugh Mobley
December 4th, 2008, 10:42 AM
If you can get or find the issues of Pro HD magazine,(or HD Pro) it addresses the rolling shutter and three other issues inherent with the cmos chips, its what you have to put up with, its the way the chip analyzes the info, the ccd sees the whole thing, the cmos sees it like you letting down a shutter. thats it, I believe it was the August and October issue, there are also white papers , go to DALSA (http://www.dalsa.com) and fish thru for the tech stuff, its there also, this company was instrumental in the design. I had to read it twice (my friend let me read his) the chips provide things the ccd doesn't, and basically the Ex1/3 could have never been made without them, too much heat. so you get what you get. All high end cameras use the ccd for now, and the cmos is cheaper to make I believe

Laurence Kingston
December 4th, 2008, 12:00 PM
I just shot some Z7 24p footage under mercury vapors. The banding was very pronounced.

Scott Caplan
February 16th, 2009, 07:18 PM
Is there a way to correct the banding in post? I thought the fluorescents in one location we shot at were high-frequency, but they were not. Plus I assumed the shutter was set at 1/60, and it was not. I'd like to avoid having to reshoot this scene, and wondered if there was a plug-in to correct this in post or not?

Thanks!

Scott