Urgent assistance needed with flickering!!!

[John Yingling]

Hey guys...in Hong Kong shooting and having a weird issue with backround flickering.

Having an issue with a sort of blinking dark spots, sporadic around areas in the backround. most noticeable on white backrounds, but it's strange. it's sporadic in its area....but seems to focus on greys and whites. it goes away when the camera is at a certain level / zoomed in a certain amount sometimes! weird. it doesn't get fixed when i convert it in final cut, either. do you know what this could be? it almost seems like some sort of zebra-ing of some fashion, but that's not the case. tried full auto, manual, etc. messed around with settings. CP's....cant seem to fix it. changing shutter speed helped a LITTLE????? any help or thoughts would rule.

also during this interview was having issues with the focus blurring on me constantly, even in manual mode. i believe changing from 60i to 30p has fixed this issue. any thoughts on why THAT would be happening to? i'm a bit worried. ha!

quick example :

wtf on Vimeo

[Chris Medico]

That is being caused by non continuous lighting that is at a frequency incompatible with your shutter speed.

You can try different shutter speeds to find one that minimizes the effect. Most likely you won't find one since you are shooting a 60hz camera in a 50hz land. See if the camera has a 50hz mode and you should get more options for shutter speed.

Alternatively if you can get your hands on a tungsten light kit it will not flicker like what you are seeing now.

[John Yingling]

You are right. The lights are flickering here, causing chaos!!!

Messing with it...1/100 seemed to fix the issue. I thought I has checked that. Man....oof. Thanks for the input.

[Mike Ayotte]

I have an xf-100 and there is a camera setting called Flicker Reduction page 57 in the manual. I shoot under these conditions a lot and it works well. Hope this helps.
Regards
Mike