• Joined: March 28, 2014

Topic: The Light Flicker Discussion Thread

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Welcome to The Light Flicker Discussion Thread. This is the place where you can post about your light flicker problems in hopes of them being solved!

Before we jump right into conversation, I'd like to post a few common issues and their solutions here for you to look over in case your issue can be solved simply.

Common Issues

  • External light sources: Be sure to close the curtains and turn off all other lights besides those directly lighting up the set to prevent uncontrolled light spilling onto your set.

  • Faulty bulbs: Often times, light bulbs can be faulty and flicker. Older florescent have a tendency to do this.

  • Electricity issues: A lot of electric outlets don't send a consistent current to the lamps, causing an inconsistent output of light.

  • LED lights: LED lights don't work well with some webcams, causing a light flickering effect or "banding" bars on the captured footage.

  • Casting shadows: If you're standing in front of a light or if a light is bouncing off something, you could be casting a shadow onto the set, causing light flicker.

  • Reflections: Light can bounce off things and cause lighting inconsistencies on set. If it's bouncing off you, try wearing darker clothing and standing farther away from the set outside of the range of light. If it's bouncing off a mirror, cover up the mirror.

  • Lens (aperture) flicker: This is especially common with Nikon automatic lenses, Nikon DSLRs, and older DSLRs. The aperture in the lens may not spring back to the same position on every frame, causing a light flickering effect and a depth of field inconsistency.

  • Automatic camera settings: Whether using a DSLR or a webcam, make sure that every setting you can find is turned on manual mode to prevent any inconsistencies between frames. Aperture, shutter speed, exposure, ISO, white balance, image stabilizer, etc.

If you don't see any solutions on the list above, try posting your problem! Someone might just have the answer for you. Be sure to include a lot of details so that we know a lot about your problem.

Details to include when posting

  • Camera: Webcam, DSLR, Point-and-shoot, Camcorder? What kind specifically?

  • Lens(es): If your camera uses lenses, what lens are you using? Zoom or prime? Automatic or manual?

  • Lights: What kind of lights do you use? Desk lamps, softboxes, Fresnel lights, LED panels, Brickstuff?

  • Lightbulbs: Are you using incandescent, florescent, LED, or something else? What's the wattage?

  • Pictures and/or video: What's your setup look like? Do you have an example of what the light flicker actually looks like?

I hope this topic helps keep all the light flicker problems organized and solved! If you have any more common problems and solutions to add to the list above, feel free to post, and I'll update it!

Happy posting!

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rioforce's Website

  • Joined: October 7, 2016

Re: The Light Flicker Discussion Thread

Hi everybody,
We're currently working on a new lego stop motion video, but we've got a huge problem with light flickers.
We can't get rid of them even though we've already done the following things:
-manual camera settings (not sure about the whitebalance)
-no natural light source
-far away from the set while taking the pictures

We would appreciate a helpful answer mini/smile

  • Joined: March 28, 2014

Re: The Light Flicker Discussion Thread

Thanks for posting, Stop Brotion! I've moved your post to this topic instead of the Critique My Frame topic. Your post is a bit vague, so if you could include maybe some details (like listed above in the topic post), we might be able to help. mini/smile

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

rioforce's Website

  • Joined: November 19, 2014

Re: The Light Flicker Discussion Thread

We struggled with this for a long time. It's important to distinguish between general flicker (caused by camera/lens) and lighting flicker (caused by light sources). For the first year of production at BrickNerd Studios we were using my Canon t3i, and flicker was a constant problem, from both lights and camera. The problem we had with lights was just cheap lights, we used (and still use) LED lights from Digital Juice. The problem with them is the potentiometers are junk, so a bit steppy and unreliable, so mid-way on a shot they could just get suddenly brighter or dimmer. We could usually mitigate this by tweaking until we got it back to where it was, but occasionally we would have to go back in post and correct it.

I always thought it was my cheap lenses that were the flicker problem, but when I upgraded to a t5i the problem instantly vanished. I still use the same lenses and flicker is a rare problem from that.

For practical sources we use almost exclusively Brickstuff lights. For a long time we dimmed them using LECs (lighting effects controllers), as it was our only option. But since those used phase cut modulation (on and off rapidly) they were subject to some real flicker problems depending on how dim they were and the length of exposure. Since then they have released new dimmers that use analog voltage regulation and are rock solid no matter what. A good test to see if your lights may be problematic is to just use the slow motion recording in your smart phone. Just dim the light and record a second or two. If it flickers when you play back, you're probably going to have flicker issues.