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What Caused This Image Flicker?


Christopher Lew

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I shot a music video on 16mm with an SR3 and noticed that some shots had this light flicker, almost as if there was light leaking. It's most noticeable at the 1:20 mark.

 

 

This was my first attempt at shooting film and thankfully the artist wanted a rough, worn look. I was wondering if anyone knew what caused this flickr to happen?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

Edited by Christopher Lew
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Were there (non-cine) fluorescent lights at that diner? It could be an aliasing problem with the ballasts. Especially if the lights were older (the newer lights use faster ballasts).

I don't think it was the lights as there are some shots in the diner with the flicker and some without it. There is also some faint flickering in the motel bathroom and the was all window light.

 

I'm guessing we may have loaded the mag incorrectly in some way?

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Hi Christopher,

 

Could you give some more information:

Was this stock new or expired?

When was the camera last serviced?

How was the footage telecined / scanned? (For example, is the black area in the left of the frame intentional at around 0:41-0:57?)

 

Could you post a frame sequence from around 1:20?

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Not sure about a light leak; you would probably see more of an edge burn or an orange tint. I think it might be something in the drive of the camera itself. I've had a very similar thing happen in Canon Scoopics and Bernie at Super 16, Inc. said that it was really hard to get everything to lineup correctly for a flawless film run on those cameras because when you adjust one thing everything else down the path changes and there's not that many adjustments you can make to a Scoopic. It wasn't made for features; more for football games and news b-roll.

 

An SR3 should be as close to perfect as you can get but if it hasn't been maintained well or just something got knocked out of alignment you could get that pulsing thing. Possibly something in the mag loading but I'd expect it was more in the film path somewhere in the camera itself.

 

For example, look at the sky in this video...

 

 

By the way, what stock did you use?

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Hi Christopher,

 

Could you give some more information:

Was this stock new or expired?

When was the camera last serviced?

How was the footage telecined / scanned? (For example, is the black area in the left of the frame intentional at around 0:41-0:57?)

 

Could you post a frame sequence from around 1:20?

Hi Heikki,

 

This was new stock however it was kept refrigerated for a few months before being shot. I noticed that the flickering was only really apparent on the shots that were taken on our second roll (we only shot 2 rolls of Kodak Vision 3 500T) so I don't know if it would have been the condition of the stock.

 

As for the camera, I managed to get the kit for free from my college. To be honest I doubt they've serviced it within the last 3 years, so that may be the culprit.

Edited by Christopher Lew
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