Jump to content

flickering problem


Chris Gloag

Recommended Posts

Electricity is a bitch , isn't it?

 

Three options:

 

A. Change your camera frame rate to 25 to match PAL land's 50hz power rating.

 

B. Change PAL land's electric AC interval to 60 hz/ sec to match your camera's 30 fps.

 

C: Wait for a newfangled camera that somehow does it for you internally and automatically. ;)

Edited by Saul Rodgar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The info on the first link Emanuel posted makes me want to repeat my earlier assessment of working with this particular camera: What a pain in the ass.

 

I can picture myself trying to set the correct exposure on a camera by adjusting the aperture on the lens and then shining light through the lens and immediately hitting the EL button, just to realize it doesn't work for the scene so I have to do it all over again? What if it goes to ASA 400 rather than the desired 200, say? As if things weren't hard enough on set already.

 

I suppose one could just do once it at the beginning of the scene and hope the battery lasts enough to shoot all the set ups at the same stop (which I always try to do anyway). But still, this really seems to much to deal with on a real life case / scenario. For most hobbyists, this may work, but when one is in the middle of an already hectic shoot, trying to deal with this (even having an assistant do it) could be harrowing to say the least.

Edited by Saul Rodgar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Electricity is a bitch , isn't it?

 

Three options:

 

A. Change your camera frame rate to 25 to match PAL land's 50hz power rating.

 

B. Change PAL land's electric AC interval to 60 hz/ sec to match your camera's 30 fps.

 

If the digital camera is a rolling shutter one, then, unlike a film camera, framerate has no effect on flicker if exposure time is matched to line frequency. Okay, framerate does have an effect on the phase of the flicker, however, the amplitude of the flicker is controlled by exposure time, and when amplitude is made to go to zero by selecting appropriate exposure times (n/(2 * line frequency), where n = 1, 2, ...) then the dependency on the framerate is removed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the digital camera is a rolling shutter one, then, unlike a film camera, framerate has no effect on flicker if exposure time is matched to line frequency. Okay, framerate does have an effect on the phase of the flicker, however, the amplitude of the flicker is controlled by exposure time, and when amplitude is made to go to zero by selecting appropriate exposure times (n/(2 * line frequency), where n = 1, 2, ...) then the dependency on the framerate is removed.

Do you mean we can avoid the flicker just with the shutter speed? Lower than 1/50 second?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you mean we can avoid the flicker just with the shutter speed? Lower than 1/50 second?

 

Yes, for a camera based upon a rolling shutter chip. However, framerate does bound the max. exposure time (shutter speed). For 25fps, max is 1/25 seconds, so exposure times of only 1/100, 2/100=1/50, 3/100, (and perhaps 4/100=1/25 depending upon the implementation) might work.

Edited by DJ Joofa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seems 1/50 is anything between two internal parameters, an electronic shutter speed emulation parameter and some kind of darkening parameter, and perhaps the auto program adjusts that latter darkening parameter for fine-tuning but not the internal shutter speed parameter, the actual shutter speed is identical at the reported speeds of 40 and 50. If you shoot mainly on a 50, that will be about 1/45. Do you think as acceptable for avoiding the flicker?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No camera yet. Would you prefer a slower/longer shutter speed? As for instance?

 

Won't go into motion blurr issues in this post.

 

A longer shutter speed (exposure time) is good for noise reduction, with the assumption that proper calibration is done for read type of noises such as dark current that becomes more problematic at longer exposure if the scene illumination is low. For regularly illuminated scenes longer exposure times work good for noise reduction.

 

Another advantage of longer exposure times is that if the exposure time is mismatched to the line frequency, then the (envelope of the) amplitude of flicker decreases with increase in exposure times. Please note that the actual amplitude of flicker is fluctuating but the fluctuation gets lower as exposure time increases as shown below:

 

bandampl.gif

 

In addition to intensity changes between successive frames, flicker also manifests itself as banding in the same single frame, which is easier to detect on uniform intensity areas, as shown below:

 

band_flicker.jpg

 

As mentioned before the wavy/banding amplitude shown in the image above can be reduced by choosing longer exposure times, and for certain exposure times the amplitudes totally goes away (i.e., converges to a constant > 0, so each image will have a gray cast, but since all frames will have the same cast it will be unnoticeable).

Edited by DJ Joofa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would you?

 

Hi Chris,

 

Sorry for being a little late in replying -- I must be too involved in merrymaking. Motion blur is a complicated subject. At the cinematography level it is sufficient to know that a larger exposure time will result in more motion blurr. However, at the signal processing level there exist algorithms that try to eliminate/control/reshape motion blur without assuming much apriori knowledge, that work sometimes, but of course, not all of the times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Chris,

 

Sorry for being a little late in replying -- I must be too involved in merrymaking. Motion blur is a complicated subject. At the cinematography level it is sufficient to know that a larger exposure time will result in more motion blurr. However, at the signal processing level there exist algorithms that try to eliminate/control/reshape motion blur without assuming much apriori knowledge, that work sometimes, but of course, not all of the times.

 

No problem, thank you.

 

What do you think about this product?

 

http://www.revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No problem, thank you.

 

What do you think about this product?

 

http://www.revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/

 

I have used products from revisionfx sparingly and if I remember correctly I might have tried a demo version of the above product, and I don't fully remember my experience with it, though my general impression is that revisionfx has reasonable products.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...