5d’s Achilles’ heel? Bizarre, horrible flicker while shooting PAL

[Wayne Matheson]

Hi, I found a simple solution to this problem when filming in China was to use incandescent lighting and DC light sources. This seem to eliminate the problem. Due to the unstable AC power supply in China, we only experienced the flicker from time to time when using fluorescent lighting sources. The frequency of the AC power seemed to shift at times and the flicker would appear. When we added incandescent light sources, the flicker went away. For one outdoor night scene, we used gas lanterns. Using a generator would be another solution to this problem, as you can select the output voltage and frequency on some models.

Wayne

[Chris Peckham]

I have also run into the same problem shooting PAL in Australia under flouro lights (daylight Osram bulbs) both on a 5d and 7d. I don’t want to be limited to tungsten lights. I’ll try a few suggestions on some other sites but haven’t found a workaround as yet.

Iechyd da (“Yachy Da” Welsh for Good Health)

[Thomas w. Silkwood]

A POINT OF INTEREST: We have encountered a different problem. I’m a American and work in Thailand. We work in multi-system environments so my team works with lots of teams from all over the world. On one occasion it wasn’t possible for a USA team to rent all the florescent lights they needed so they decided to us standard florescent tube lights, the kind you put in your work shot back home. The florescence looked okay except for one bank. The USA team came to us and asked for help. They couldn’t figure out why one bank of lights had the flicker. I noted that they gelled all their lights except the one they were getting flicker from. I suggested they gel this light too and the flicker was gone. I thought some of you might find this interesting.

[Frank Amann]

Hi Heath Cozens,

did you yet find a solution to the flicker problem with the 5D shooting PAL in 60Hz environments though setting the shutter to 1/60?

I’m asking because I encountered the same problem this January shooting in New York. Much of the ambient lighting (not only fluorescents, but energy saving bulbs, some street lights) showed flicker which I couldn’t stop by any exposure time (the best behaviour I found with 1/40 (strangely enough), second best was 1/60). There were no issues whatsoever with my own litepanels sources (which was to be expected).

There also were no issues shooting with the C300 at 1/60.

Cheers,
Frank (based in Berlin, Germany, which is PAL and 1/50)