The rolling shutter...

El Director

El Director

Veteran
Is there any way around it?
I had the opportunity to play with the 7D and T2i at a local camera store. The guys were cool and let me use their memory cards and a reader to upload the footage to my laptop. At home I threw it into Vegas and AE. Man, I love the color, love the detail, but that darn rolling shutter. Is there anything out there to compensate? I'm shooting a feature in August that's along the lines of a Bourne film so there's a lot of fast motion. I'm considering renting a RED, but I'd rather save the money if I could.
 
Honestly, the rolling shutter is hardly an issue for me. Lately, I've been shooting a lot of skatboarding, surfing, portraits and landscape for this project I've been working on. I shoot a lot of handheld without any rigs, just using the neckstrap and it looks great -- steady and rolling shutter free.

But if you want to do a lot of whip pans and really jerky camera movements, then it's not the camera for the job. because you will get rolling shutter. But if you know it's limitation and practice a bit, rolling shutter becomes a rare thing.
 
The Red has a rolling shutter too.

If you want to get away from a rolling shutter, your choices are a CCD camera or film.
 
El Director said:
Is there any way around it?
I had the opportunity to play with the 7D and T2i at a local camera store. The guys were cool and let me use their memory cards and a reader to upload the footage to my laptop. At home I threw it into Vegas and AE. Man, I love the color, love the detail, but that darn rolling shutter. Is there anything out there to compensate? I'm shooting a feature in August that's along the lines of a Bourne film so there's a lot of fast motion. I'm considering renting a RED, but I'd rather save the money if I could.
Click to expand...

This doesn't make sense to me. The RED has a rolling shutter as well. You probably want a camera without a rolling shutter for that kind of work.

[Edit: I see Barry was a little quicker on the enter button than I was... :) ]
 
The rolling shutter was the number one concern for me since I shoot mostly action oriented stuff. I found that it's barely noticeable (especially to your average viewer) if you just shoot at 720p, which is enough resolution for me. For 1080p, I occasionally use it for shots without a lot of movement and I need that tiny bit of extra shutter speed (1/50th versus 1/60th). The aliasing seems better at 720p, too, and you get the option of doing slow mo in post (it's not ideal if you're not shooting at 1/120th, I know, but it's an option you don't really have with 1080p), so really, I just consider it a 720p camera with an emergency 1080p backup.
 
aliasing is actually much worse in 720p ,even when shooting stuff like water in lake you can spot aliasing.I consider t2i as 720p cam in 24p mode with 480p 60p for slowmotion.
Rolling shutter is visible with quick lights like from sirens or something.But during normal movement you dont really notice unless you pan randomly .
You need some stabilizer ,like merlin or something,or glidecam,even if its bourne type movie,first bourne didnt had so much shakiness,second had some but third was very handheld,still their cam was heavy ,t2i is too light for handheld because of micro jitters,you need something to stabilize it.
 
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If you weigh the camera down rolling shutter becomes less of a problem.

But honestly I wouldn't use it for a Bourne styled film. I have tried it, and the results are less then ideal.
 
The Foundry makes a plug-in that does a pretty good job of fixing rolling shutter skew in post. It's expensive, but you can rent it from them for days at a time.
 
CoreMelt's "Lock and Load" plug-in is also a very good rolling-shutter reducer, and it's a bit cheaper than the Foundry's.

--SM
 
Thanks for the info guys!
I'll go back to the store and try some stuff at 720 and see how that looks, but it's looking like a bad idea. Same with the RED. Good to know!
 
Take a look at this plug in for FCP that was released recently from CoreMelt.
They have some fabulous plug ins BTW, and very affordable.
 
El Director said:
Is there any way around it?
I had the opportunity to play with the 7D and T2i at a local camera store. The guys were cool and let me use their memory cards and a reader to upload the footage to my laptop. At home I threw it into Vegas and AE. Man, I love the color, love the detail, but that darn rolling shutter. Is there anything out there to compensate? I'm shooting a feature in August that's along the lines of a Bourne film so there's a lot of fast motion. I'm considering renting a RED, but I'd rather save the money if I could.
Click to expand...

The 1dmkIV has virtually no rolling shutter and fantastic lowlight capabilities. Maybe consider renting that? I've used one a few times and it's an AWESOME camera, built like a beast, doesn't seem similar to the cheaper DSLRs IMO.
 
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