Camcorders and fluorescent lights -- wavy banding

B

Bschwartz

New member
Hello: I've been searching wide and far for a solution to my issue with no luck yet. Would be grateful for any assistance. I often shoot in an office environment that typically has fluorescent overhead lighting. with a few cameras now, I have had issues with footage that is light then goes dark then goes dark again. Now I have a new Panasonic HDC TM-90 and I have the additional issue with banding wavy lines that are showing up. Made footage look awful. I've read about rolling shutters and have tinkered with autofocus and manual settings to know avail. When not in fluorescent light, images from the camera are stunningly good.

If I need to by additional lighting sources, I may have to do that, but I am trying to avoid that unless I know it will solve the problem. Have anyone else ever dealt with this and come up with a fix?

I've linked to a YouTube clip that shows what I am talking about. Unfortunately, I had to white out private info about the subject but you can get the idea.

Grateful for any suggestions,
Brian
 
Assuming you're in North America, set the shutter to 1/60 and leave it there.

If you're in Europe or PAL territory, set it to 1/50.
 
Bschwartz said:
Hello: I've been searching wide and far for a solution to my issue with no luck yet. Would be grateful for any assistance. I often shoot in an office environment that typically has fluorescent overhead lighting. with a few cameras now, I have had issues with footage that is light then goes dark then goes dark again. Now I have a new Panasonic HDC TM-90 and I have the additional issue with banding wavy lines that are showing up. Made footage look awful. I've read about rolling shutters and have tinkered with autofocus and manual settings to know avail. When not in fluorescent light, images from the camera are stunningly good.

If I need to by additional lighting sources, I may have to do that, but I am trying to avoid that unless I know it will solve the problem. Have anyone else ever dealt with this and come up with a fix?

I've linked to a YouTube clip that shows what I am talking about. Unfortunately, I had to white out private info about the subject but you can get the idea.

Grateful for any suggestions,
Brian
Click to expand...
What frame rate and shutter speed are you using?
 
Thanks SLondon and Dave. Originally, I had everything automatic at 29FPS (On Automatic, the default shutter speed is 1/60). On manual, I kept the shutter speed at 1/60 -- a little better though that seems to have focus problems. It may be, I just need to practice more to adjust on the fly. Thanks for the tips.
 
Leave autofocus off. Focus doesn't affect the banding, anyway. That's purely a function of the rolling shutter and its speed vs. the frequency of the power grid.
 
David, I'm surprised he's having trouble at 1/60. I had guessed that he just had a flicker problem because of a mismatch between shutter speed and magnetic ballasts in the flos which would be running at 120 Hz. Why the banding the way he's shooting?
 
The 1/60 shutter should take care of the problem, so I'd suspect there's more going on with the shutter speed. He indicated that it's "better" but said there were focus problems.

Brian, how much "better" is it with the 1/60 shutter? Is the problem solved, and now it's just the focus issue?
 
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