Rolling Shutter - Show me your worst

[Ian Laurie]

The Images of the lightening also helps as depending on the where the "roll" of the shutter happens to be when the lightening strikes, there will be a lighter part of the frame and a darker part of the frame. it also may not capture all the lightening strike. I have a good example of this somewhere with a gunshot in a dark room that i will upload for you later.

 

[Dominik Muench]

that race car image is fantastic. thanks guys.

Ian: wicked, thanks heaps for all the support.

 

[Milan Spasic]

Why would you think that? Cameras perform in all sorts of adverse conditions. As I said in an earlier post, I tested three cameras for this project. The other two performed quite well. The 7D was unusable. This is crash cam territory, so I wasn't interested in testing my Red One.

I hear you. We've used a variety of POV on fast moving race vehicles, off and on road. Whether it's a GoPro, 5D, Sony or any other digital POV setup, if the mount is not sturdy, you will get the similar effect. That's all I'm saying.

We acheived great results with 5D POV setups in pretty rough racing conditions. A solid mount attached to a sturdy part of the vehicle (roll cage) will produce great results. Rolling shutter was not an issue. 7D is quite a bit heavier than 170 or GoPro so it's understandable you've got those results.

Sorry to hijack the thread, glad you found the right camera for the job.
And no, I wouldn't put my R1 on a moving snowplow either!

Cheers,

Milan

 

[alexx_hg]

last week at helishooting handheld with a RED One:

When the heli was on very low speed, there was some low frequenz motion, which causes small wobbling on the RED.

some quick assembled Helishots, RED 3K/16:9/50fps/ shot handheld/stabilized in AE you can find here:

http://vimeo.com/13172896

bg
alex

 

[Brigham Edgar]

There are two types of shutter used in todays video cameras...a global shutter which is primarily used in CCD video cameras...and a rolling shutter used primarily in CMOS sensor cameras. There are pro's and con's for both shutters and the most prevalent (at least for debates) is the rolling shutter artefact you get with the latter. The reasons for this are...a global shutter exposes the entire frame instantly on each exposure for each frame, a rolling shutter does exactly what it says. It exposes each frame over a period of time from left to right starting at the top of each frame and moving downwards until the end ( i am not sure if it is always left to right and top to bottom, it may change from camera to camera). It does this on each frame exposed...so 24 frames a second means 24 times it will do this. Now the time it takes to do this is commonly called the read/reset time, and the longer it takes to do this the chances of getting an artefact from it increase. A fast pan through a straight pole will show the poll (on a single frame) as being very bent, and as the pics in the previous posts you can see the effect on the wheels quite clearly as they are more egg shaped.
With all CMOS cameras that have a rolling shutter you get the effect, it is impossible not too, just in different levels. It basically comes down to how good the camera actually is with it's internal technology. POV cameras usually have the rolling shutter and CMOS sensors and because of the size and cost etc the rolling shutter can be quite bad. Good cameras with a good read/reset times like a Red One show very little effect. The truck with the 7D is a good example...the current DSLR's like the 5D and 7D actually are very bad video cameras with a lot of bad artefacts, they need to be used with caution but more so should only be used when appropriate and with sufficient testing. Rolling shutter is but one bad point with them.
It's also good to note that film also has this effect as the shutter opens...because it is not an instant exposure. I believe it is around a 4ms response time while a Red One is about 9m/s from memory with the new DSMC being able to make 5m/s when finished. I am not sure what is for a DSLR but they are bad...very bad. This is one of the biggest hurdles with making a quality CMOS/rolling shutter camera and one of the reasons why manufacturers have traditionally gone down the CCD with global shutter route.
It should always come down to using the best camera for each job, and this of course comes down to budget a lot of the time. People are loving the images you can get from a DSLR but by using these the range of functionality/usability is greatly reduced and quite frankly you can get far better picture quality pictures from a 5 year old video camera. For the money they look stunning and in turn their being used because of the price...and FF. The biggest disappointment is seeing professionals using them where they shouldn't and there are much better options but they may not be as 'cool'...but heh...that's another argument...

 

[Marc Wielage]

There's a good (albeit short) piece at this Wikipedia link on Rolling Shutter problems and examples. It's not so much a Red problem as a CMOS characteristic.

Michael Jackson: This Is It and District 9 have many examples of rolling shutter in certain fast-moving horizontal shots. The MX chip has reduced a lot of these problems quite a bit, but a lot depends on the specific exposure and shutter angle involved.