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Epic Shooting A Camera Flash

A

Andy Nguyen

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I was wondering if any of you had any advice about shooting a scene where a camera's flash would be going off with the Epic not looking strange. There's a scene in this film where a camera flash goes off from a still camera.

I know this is a beginner question, but after looking through all the menus I can't find anything that addresses frequency?

I don't know. Is frequency even what I am looking for? Shutter angle?

Any advice from you genius Epic DPs out there.

Is using a camera flash going to look weird?

Thanks, guys.
 
If you're thinking of "half-lit frames" it will on both the Epic and Alexa if you're looking at stills...

I dunno, but I guess the only "real" solution would be to emulate the flas with a "flash" that stays just a little longer.
Haven't really dug into this, so this is just an initial reflex-thought...
 
Gunleik,

Yea, I want to avoid that half lit frame.

At least I am thinking that we're talking about the same thing. Like once on a shoot someone used a camera flash to mimic a gunshot flash. In post they looked at the footage and it looked weird. When I played it frame by frame there was the flash but only for half the frame, like there was a dividing line a completely straight parallel (to the pixel). Seemed to lag or something. Weird.

Just wanted to know remedies of still using the camera flash but shooting it on the Epic.

Gunleik, thanks for replying. I would like to use the actual flash if possible. I'm shooting on location and would prefer to not deal with added complications. If it's possible to do this in camera that would be amazing.

Thanks!
 
Gunleik,

Yea, I want to avoid that half lit frame.

At least I am thinking that we're talking about the same thing. Like once on a shoot someone used a camera flash to mimic a gunshot flash. In post they looked at the footage and it looked weird. When I played it frame by frame there was the flash but only for half the frame, like there was a dividing line a completely straight parallel (to the pixel). Seemed to lag or something. Weird.

Just wanted to know remedies of still using the camera flash but shooting it on the Epic.

Gunleik, thanks for replying. I would like to use the actual flash if possible. I'm shooting on location and would prefer to not deal with added complications. If it's possible to do this in camera that would be amazing.

Thanks!
 
I just shot a test for flashes and it seemed to work fine. No strange half blown out frames.
 
This is rolling shutter guys, typical of the type of sensor used in our cameras. The image is scanned from top to bottom over a short duration, not all at once - usually to little detrimental effect. Unfortunately very fast moving object can be distorted, and the very short period of illumination given by a strobe or camera flash will sometimes be even shorter than the time taken for the sensor to capture a complete frame.

There's no good solution to this, and shutter speed is irrelevant - experimentation might lead you to better settings on a camera flash, but beware that this may not even be totally repeatable from one firing to another.
 
Lower voltage strobe units, like Speedotron at 900 volts, at higher power settings, like 2400 w/s have longer flash durations, like 1/150 to 1/250 sec, as opposed to higher voltage, like the huge Ascor professional 4000 volt systems, which have shorter flash durations in the 1/1000 to 1/4000 sec durations. I think any of these professional units will produce flashes too short for your purpose. A suggestion, if you can find them, would be the old fashioned approach of flash bulbs like Press 25s, which have a much slower ignite and burn, but produce a strong flash. A place to start would be here where I found M3Bs. https://www.interlight.biz/light-bulb/FLASH-M3B&ID=FROOGLE-US

Hope this helps.
 
You could try these, http://www.ebay.com/itm/19-Oldtime-...208?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5eecc8b8. I use to use them when I was a kid, i put them in 120v outlets to freak out my friends. They put out a lot of light and the duration is considerable so most likely there would be no rolling shutter issues. Maybe 120v is a bit much it looks like they are being offered with the flash unit which holds a couple of D cells.
 
FWIW, just did a test with my Epic, 180 degree shutter at 29.97, with Nikon SB900 flash. Manual setting at 1/64 power showed partial frame illumination, BUT, at full power, entire frame is illuminated...

Mike
 
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