URGENT! EMERGENCY! SENSOR ISSUE?

[Marcus Friedlander]

Hello everyone,

I am right in the middle of a feature, and on one scene last night, I noticed a really weird and scary artifact. It looked like scan lines going up the frame.

I noticed it through the EVF when I put the camera on my shoulder, but just had to shoot because we were running out of time and it was the last shot of the day.

However, after dumping the card it looks like the scan lines are in the negative itself.

Can someone please take a look at this R3D trim and give me some advice?

I blackshaded the camera again, but I need to know if I have to get my camera replaced ASAP because of a sensor issue!

Thank you very much for any help you can provide!

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/00...b2fd69ea6b8f3542b769d20520170806090011/87e7c6

 

[Dan Kanes]

Didn't have time to download it.

Does it appear using natural daylight , or a tungsten (non flo, non led, non hdmi source?)

You might be seeing a lighting artifact from frequency timing of a light source in, near, or lighting your frame.

When I get time I'll download and inspect it.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I don't see the scan light artifact on the exterior surface or on the cop. Which suggests that the culprit may be the light source you used for the interior. What was the light you used?

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Thank you very much for your responses!!

The lights inside for that shot were just the overhead house lights, so maybe that was the issue. (Though if I remember correctly I had them on in an earlier shot that we did inside that entrance way. Let me go look at that shot and see if it's there as well.)

I really hope that was the issue!!!!

Thank you so much Dan and Bob for taking the time to and giving your input! Really appreciate that guys thanks!!!

P.S. Just for reference, the orange light on the left of frame was an incandescent practical, and the girl paramedic walking into the house was edged on the other side by a litepanel astra on full daylight.

P.P.S. Dan, I'm pretty sure I rented your specific set of Duclos Extension tubes from DFS for this shoot hahaha. So thank you very much for that! And for recommending me to DFS in the first place about a year ago!

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Yay!!!!!!!!

I just talked to my gaffer to confirm. The earlier shot inside the house DID NOT have the practical house lights on, but the one with the scan lines DID have the house lights on!

So it looks like that was the culprit!!!!

Never have I been so happy to learn a painful DP lesson

I'm so freaking relieved right now hahahaha

Thank you very much for all of your help!

Time to go back to making movies

 

[Zack Birlew]

If you mixed in CFL lights then that's likely to cause an issue. I have heard that cheap home LED lights can cause flicker and other issues as well but that's usually only a problem with high speed work of 120fps and above. Some locations use a mix so people should factor that into their location scouting. I use primarily Philips brand LED bulbs as they seem really accurate and Cree is pretty good too. Hopefully it was a simple fix for your shots or that you can film those again easily.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

The weird thing is that the house we were shooting at is normally rented out for productions. The owner even had his own G&E and PRODUCTION gear for us to rent out, so I didn't even think that something on his end would be the issue. I just assumed it was something on my end.

But you know what they say about assuming...........

The owner was nice enough to offer us a free hour or two to reshoot the scene if we can figure out a way to work it into our schedule. Luckily for us, its a really tiny scene that is a connector for another scene, so if we had to just cut it completely we could still tell the story. But still its an important lesson learnt.