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My Maglite flashlight is flickering... Why?


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Under normal settings: 25fps, 180 angle it's flickering like any light under 5KW when shooting slowmo. With other settings, when changing fps and angle it also does, but the pattern is obviously different. My friend's flashlights (not maglite) do not flicker at those settings. I cannot find any explanation to that. I thought that DC do not produce any flicker.

Please share your thoughts about it.

Thanks,

Alex

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ha! Yeah... I clicked on this thread b/c I was curious...why would a Mag Light flicker?

I didn't know they made LED mag lights. There ya go!

 

The only LED flashlights I know that don't flicker are some (maybe all?) of the Surefires.

The Surefire St Minimus headlamp blows my mind...it has a dimmer and *still* doesn't flicker! I haven't done a high speed test or a fast shutter test, but my eyes are extremely sensitive to flicker (there are two AC's I work with who's headlamps drive me crazy---just seeing them out of the corner of my eye, I think I'm going to have a seizure, I can't understand how they can even stand it)...and that's the only one I know who's ballast doesn't begin to flicker when dimmed. I have used it on camera at 23.98fps/180º and it won't flicker.

It's a shame that mag light has gone the cheap route with the LED's...they used to be a good quality company.

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It's a shame that mag light has gone the cheap route with the LED's...they used to be a good quality company.

 

Don't knock it. I bought a conversion kit for a maglite yeeeeaarrrsss ago. Brighter than the regular flavor and I don't remember ever swapping batteries or the lights themselves.

Can't speak to Maglite's version of the LED stuff, but, for something like that, I'd go LED.

 

Unless it's an onscreen prop/practical... then yeah... no LED.

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I just knock it b/c they're being cheap b/c they're using inferior ballasts. Surefire doesn't skimp on this. Lightpanels doesn't skimp on this but cheap (quality) LED's like rotolights do (as the power drains, they don't shut off, so they just start flickering)

 

Cadillacs aren't cheap cars, but they have cheap LED's in their brake lights. BMW's aren't cheap either, but they use good ballasts, I've never seen BMW LED's flicker (bikes or cars).

This isn't just for photographic reasons...the flicker is very irritating to me.

 

As LED's take off more and more, it's going to effect movie photography---things you can't control like a cityscape shot of rush hour...you see dozens of flickery LED brake lights now.

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