Flickering with fluo by PAL 25p
 

Hi all
Recently I shoot one documentary in the states with my DVX100AE (PAL).
We shooted at 25p and I noticed that sometimes with fluorescent light I got some strong flickering that I never saw before. In Europe with interlaced cameras I got sometimes some flickering, or when we made film we had to pay attention with the shutter angle and so on. But I never saw anything like this. It is really disturbing and I had no way of avoiding these places so we have some footage with the flickering on it

Anyone knows if it has to do with the 60Hz of USA, or is just the 25p and bad luck…

I heard sometimes of “anti flickering filters” anyone had any experience with those? Any recommendation? Or any link to some web?

Thank you!

Stephane

Like your shutter angle with film cameras, you may need to adjust the electronic shutter on the DVX. In your case 1/50th should have worked. If necessary, you can use the syncro-scan function of the shutter speed setting to fine tune the adjustment.

I re-read your question and realized I missed the most important part. If you are shooting here in the states with a 24p PAL camera then you want to adjust your electronic shutter to 1/60 second (electricity is at 60hz here) - or as close to this as possible - to avoid flicker. 1/50th would be the magic number in PAL land. Sorry.

I have also experienced weird color shifts or cycling under fluorescents while shooting with an "out of phase" shutter speed - 1/48 for example. It happens gradually over several seconds and isn't readily noticeable. It becomes pretty apparent on playback though while searching forwards or backwards - especially in a predominantly white setting.