C100 - No hope for fast shutter without flicker???

[John Yingling]

Hey all,

So, I've dug, and dug, and just cannot figure this out.

Seems like a simple question :

Is there ANY way to get anywhere near the speed of 1/2000 shutter, without LED / light flicker?

I'm using a C100 Mark1, tooling around Asia (though this happens everywhere) and any shutter speed outside of 1/100 (24P) gives the dreaded banding.

1/100 shutter speed is a bit slow for Tokyo / punk rock / music. I mean, it still looks great, but a bit higher would do so well for the hectic Tokyo streets.

All in all, I'm a confused novice to be honest. I can get rid of the flicker while in other shutter modes as well, clear scan, etc, but none of them give as crisp of movement as 1/2000.

Some train shots at 2000 look amazing, but any time we pass an LED or any sort of light, boom, flicker.

Basically, after months of shooting, most of my footage looks amazing, but I could really use some more shutter speed for quick camera movements / motion.

Am I missing something here... (or just too inexperienced?)

[Chris Medico]

Its not a camera problem. The camera is showing you exactly what is happening. The lights do flicker.

If you need to use that shutter speed you need to look at ways to reduce the problem in post.

I've had decent luck using the "flicker fixer" plugin from BorrisFX.

Flicker Fixer « Boris FX – Make it in Post

[John Yingling]

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

Its not a camera problem. The camera is showing you exactly what is happening. The lights do flicker.

If you need to use that shutter speed you need to look at ways to reduce the problem in post.

I've had decent luck using the "flicker fixer" plugin from BorrisFX.

Flicker Fixer « Boris FX – Make it in Post

So, any sort of artificial light, anywhere, and I'm stuck with 1/100 shutter, or mad strobe and flicker?

Seems...strange to me.

I was hoping for a "no, you idiot! use this!", but maybe it doesn't exist. Thanks for the flicker fixer, but If I must I'll work around with a non flicker shutter.

[Chris Medico]

Its not strange. It is the realities of the modern high efficiency lighting products.

Most new lighting technologies are non-continuous. Many use PWM for managing brightness and color fidelity. If the PWM pulses aren't high enough in frequency then you'll see flicker or bands in your video. 2000 is a very high shutter speed and virtually any non-continuous light is going to show artifacts in your video. To film in those conditions you will need to provide your own tested light sources that you know don't flicker or mange it in your post production workflow. Alternatively you can choose shutter speeds that are compatible with the lighting if you can't control the sources.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by John Yingling

was hoping for a "no, you idiot! use this!", but maybe it doesn't exist. Thanks for the flicker fixer, but If I must I'll work around with a non flicker shutter.

I've successfully used the Digital Anarchy Flicker Free plugin to eliminate it.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by John Yingling

Seems...strange to me.

Yet, it's really not the camera, or the camera's shutter. It's the lights. And it's you, not properly using your camera to deal with the lights. Here's a tutorial that explains it.

[Dan Brockett]

Why would you want to shoot at such an extreme shutter speed, what is this gaining you?

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

Why would you want to shoot at such an extreme shutter speed, what is this gaining you?

That's what I was thinking. I've never felt the need to shoot higher than 1/100. 99% of the time, there's no point shooting at a higher shutter speed unless you're looking to produce a certain effect in camera.

[Bob Drummond]

I guess a lot of camera operators and cinematographers would say there's no point in violating the 180 degree shutter unless there's a need for an effect (1/48 for 24p, 1/60 for 30p, and 1/120 for 60p). Do you ever use those "standard" settings?

[Dan Brockett]

Right, just like the fight scenes in Gladiator. There, high speed shutter was an aesthetic choice that made sense, although to view the entire film that way would have been highly distracting. To me, super high speed shutter is an effect, to be used sparingly when the story motivates it. But to shoot all of the time for a whole shoot seems counter-intuitive for such a noticeable "effect"

Even though I usually shoot 24p, I often have to use 1/60th of a shutter for discharge lamps here in the states because of flicker and rolling bars through the shot, especially noticeable on green screen.

[John Yingling]

Hey all - thanks for the information, comments, and blunt thwaps.

I have used 1/48. Still flicker city, and too slow for such intense motion. I suppose it's easier not in Tokyo, where these lights are on literally every building.

Why do I want such a shutter speed? 300 Km/hour trains. Intense movement in central Tokyo. Super fast rides on motorbikes, cars wizzing by. Super quick pans, crowd surfing shots, all sorts for live music.

However, 1/100 is good. Fast movement, quick pans and all that jazz just seemed a bit more blurry than my liking, is all.

Thanks muchly again for your input and articles. It helped. The RED tutorial was a nice read.

[Bob Drummond]

Yeah, if you're still getting flicker at 1/50th or 1/60th (depending on the electricity in the country you're in) then the problem is probably the lights, not the camera. I'm running into cheap flickering LED lights more and more at weddings. Hopefully camera manufacturers will be able to come up with a solution some day, because cheap LED lights are only going to become more and more common.

[Dan Brockett]

Since Japan is 50Hz country, if you are getting flicker at 1/50th and or 1/100th of a second shutter speed, that means the lamps are discharging at a different operating frequency. You could always try the flicker reducer and or shutter sync functions but one you have more than one source flickering in the same frame, all bets are off.

To me, high speed shutter always looks "strobey", that's one of the characteristics of high speed shutter. 180 degree shutter has a good amount of motion blur in it, that's what makes the motion relatively smooth. Have you tried shooting a higher speed frame rate, then speeding up the footage in editing? Shooting that, obviously, with another camera, since the C100 doesn't shoot at higher frame rates?

[Jon Fairhurst]

Eastern Japan (Tokyo) is 50 Hz. Western Japan (Osaka) is 60 Hz. I don't know of any other country with such a split.But if the lights run on their own, independent frequency, that can make filming difficult.

[Dan Brockett]

Wow, I had no idea they were split frequency, that is really weird. So if you do a shoot in Japan should you shoot 23.98 or 25 fps? Guess it depends on where you are in the country.