Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
Ad
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
I'm having a problem that only seemed to start recently, where my DSLR (Canon 700D, 60mm macro lens) is getting some weird light flicker and I can't work out the source. I tried different bulbs, light and dark lighting, turning all the exposure settings up and down, but it won't go away. Sometimes the darkness looks like it scrolls from top-to-bottom, like a rolling shutter, but I would have no idea what to do if that was the source of the problem.
Any ideas?
What shutter speed are you shooting with? I've found that if I'm shooting at high shutter speeds, I sometimes get flickering because of the rapid oscillation of the light's power. This is very noticeable with fluorescent lights. If you are shooting with anything faster than 1/50 (1/60 in US) you will notice very pronounced flickering.
If the problem lies somewhere in the lighting itself rather than an internal camera problem, shooting with a longer shutter should average out the flickers.
Have you eliminated the possibility of aperture flicker? When you use a Canon lens on a Canon body it is opening the aperture up each shot, you can lock the aperture in place using this method
If the problem lies somewhere in the lighting itself rather than an internal camera problem, shooting with a longer shutter should average out the flickers.
The problem is that the flicker is visible in the feed itself, it doesn't just appear after capture. Generally making the image brighter drowns it out a bit, but it's still visible between frames.
Have you eliminated the possibility of aperture flicker? When you use a Canon lens on a Canon body it is opening the aperture up each shot, you can lock the aperture in place using this method
I'll give it a go!
You know, I'm pretty sure I had a similar problem years ago, but I was never able to solve it. That's why a lot of my videos from a certain time period are all a little over exposed, the issue was much more pronounced in darker shots. It just sort of went away, eventually. It may have been when I switched to manual focus lenses, so I'd say aperture flicker is a likely culprit.
Hi,
does anybody try to fix flicker problems on post production using plugins?
I found this old link from Adobe, but the plugins mentioned here are still available.
https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/r … otography/
Of course, the best option is to solve the problems on camera, but sometimes it's quite hard.
Just curious if anybody on the forum had any experience.
Best
Have you eliminated the possibility of aperture flicker? When you use a Canon lens on a Canon body it is opening the aperture up each shot, you can lock the aperture in place using this method
This fixed it!! Thank you. 
Nice! Glad it worked.
I'm using this existing thread for a similar kind of problem wich I'm not sure whether was answered or not.
I have bought yesterday a Canon 1300D with standard 18-55mm lens. While the scene setup allows me to focus where I want, I have noticed a slight change in the brightness from shot to shot. I did a few setting changes, such as white balance and iso, and it's still there, slight but noticeable. Is the problem the lights that flicker impercettibly to me but percettibly to the camera? I have two neon tubes such as this:
and here are two shots with slightly different brightness:
is it a settings problem in the camera or a lighting problem?
can somebody please help me out?
Where's the light in relation to the set? It's kinda hard to get the context of it from the pic.
It could be your shadow or reflection on the set, that happens to me a lot when I put the lights up high. Also, the two comparison shots have slightly different focus points, so it's hard to compare them.
Make sure the Auto Stabilizer on your lens (it's a switch on the left side of the lens) is turned off, and any equivalent features inside the camera.
Sorry I can't help more, but maybe you can try that out and maybe it'll work.
It could be your shadow or reflection on the set, that happens to me a lot when I put the lights up high. Also, the two comparison shots have slightly different focus points, so it's hard to compare them.
I'm not sure about it being my shadow, although the lights are about half a meter (that's 1.5 feet I think?) high. What I was wondering is whether it's the tubes that flicker in a way I can't see with naked eye, but my camera detects, or just a camera setting I need to change.
By slightly different focus points, you mean exactly what?
Also, I turned down the stabilizer, but I was wondering what equivalent or similar setting needs to be turned off.
Thank you anyways 
All auto functions like lens stabilization need to be turned off?
Did you try this method? The one that fixed the problem Hazzat was having?
One possible issue could be that the light source could be flickering. Usually, if you want to test this, the best thing to do is wave your hand around and observe the blur with your own eyes while under the light source.
If your hand looks like several frames layered together, each clearly shaped like a hand, then your light source is actually flickering quite fast.
If your hand has a smooth consistent blur, then the light source probably isn't flickering really fast.
If super fast flickering is truly the issue, you can usually get around it by using a long exposure. This will mostly average out the flicker and return fairly consistent frames.
If that's not the issue, it may be another one which I might have a fix for.
All auto functions like lens stabilization need to be turned off?
Did you try this method? The one that fixed the problem Hazzat was having?
I actually don't know where's that 'preview button' on my 1300D.
One possible issue could be that the light source could be flickering. Usually, if you want to test this, the best thing to do is wave your hand around and observe the blur with your own eyes while under the light source.
If your hand looks like several frames layered together, each clearly shaped like a hand, then your light source is actually flickering quite fast.
If your hand has a smooth consistent blur, then the light source probably isn't flickering really fast.
If super fast flickering is truly the issue, you can usually get around it by using a long exposure. This will mostly average out the flicker and return fairly consistent frames.
If that's not the issue, it may be another one which I might have a fix for.
About using a long exposure, how long? I tried with a 1 (wich also made overall the frame much brighter) and I still had the problem. Also, while doing this, I noticed that I just can't handle loghting from 0,5cm closeups. If the character moves, lighting gets brighter frame by frame. This, and the small brightness vibrations, how can I solve them? Exposure or some other setting? there are many settings I've modified so they're not automatic, but I'm not sure that it's enough.
Also sometimes I see grain in the screen, especially on close-ups. What's that I have to change in the settings?
Last edited by LegoStudiosP (September 22, 2016 (09:26am))
Squid wrote:One possible issue could be that the light source could be flickering. Usually, if you want to test this, the best thing to do is wave your hand around and observe the blur with your own eyes while under the light source.
If your hand looks like several frames layered together, each clearly shaped like a hand, then your light source is actually flickering quite fast.
If your hand has a smooth consistent blur, then the light source probably isn't flickering really fast.
If super fast flickering is truly the issue, you can usually get around it by using a long exposure. This will mostly average out the flicker and return fairly consistent frames.
If that's not the issue, it may be another one which I might have a fix for.
About using a long exposure, how long? I tried with a 1 (wich also made overall the frame much brighter) and I still had the problem. Also, while doing this, I noticed that I just can't handle loghting from 0,5cm closeups. If the character moves, lighting gets brighter frame by frame. This, and the small brightness vibrations, how can I solve them? Exposure or some other setting? there are many settings I've modified so they're not automatic, but I'm not sure that it's enough.
Also sometimes I see grain in the screen, especially on close-ups. What's that I have to change in the settings?
A shutter speed of around 1/4 - 1/2 seconds should be long enough to average out flicker caused by your lights. You can avoid making the overall picture too bright if you compensate by using a smaller aperature (larger f/stop number) or a lower ISO.
Your grain problem could be caused by high ISO. If you stick to an ISO of 400 or lower, you should be able to eliminate most, if not all, of your image grain. Another reason for image grain could be if you are using digital zoom instead of optical zoom.
Hope this helps.
LegoStudiosP wrote:Squid wrote:One possible issue could be that the light source could be flickering. Usually, if you want to test this, the best thing to do is wave your hand around and observe the blur with your own eyes while under the light source.
If your hand looks like several frames layered together, each clearly shaped like a hand, then your light source is actually flickering quite fast.
If your hand has a smooth consistent blur, then the light source probably isn't flickering really fast.
If super fast flickering is truly the issue, you can usually get around it by using a long exposure. This will mostly average out the flicker and return fairly consistent frames.
If that's not the issue, it may be another one which I might have a fix for.
About using a long exposure, how long? I tried with a 1 (wich also made overall the frame much brighter) and I still had the problem. Also, while doing this, I noticed that I just can't handle loghting from 0,5cm closeups. If the character moves, lighting gets brighter frame by frame. This, and the small brightness vibrations, how can I solve them? Exposure or some other setting? there are many settings I've modified so they're not automatic, but I'm not sure that it's enough.
Also sometimes I see grain in the screen, especially on close-ups. What's that I have to change in the settings?A shutter speed of around 1/4 - 1/2 seconds should be long enough to average out flicker caused by your lights. You can avoid making the overall picture too bright if you compensate by using a smaller aperature (larger f/stop number) or a lower ISO.
Your grain problem could be caused by high ISO. If you stick to an ISO of 400 or lower, you should be able to eliminate most, if not all, of your image grain. Another reason for image grain could be if you are using digital zoom instead of optical zoom.Hope this helps.
Thank you very much, but how can I determine whether it's using optical or digital zoom? For all I know, I'm pretty sure it's an optical zoom, as I manually set it. Other than that, the use of very low ISO next to that shutter speed will allow to not change brightness between frames?
Sorry for being this annoying and ignorant, I'm new to DSLRs
Thanks for everyone's help, Feinstein Films got the solution. Still everyone's proposals helped me learn some stuff about my new camera, so thanks.
The optical zoom is on the lens, the digital zoom is a button on the camera body. Usually.
Hope that helps
osomSudios
Posts [ 1 to 20 of 21 ]
