Shooting With Strobe Lights

[Kevin Duggin]

Im shooting a feature at the end of the month and need some advice. I shot some test with some strobe lights and got some pretty terrible banding because of the rolling shutter. I was using pretty low end strobes. I was wondering what is the best way to eliminate the banding?

Also would using legitimate "Lightning Strikes" instead of store bought strobes help?

I was shooting 4k Raw, 23.98, RC 36, 180 degree shutter


Thanks

[Brandon Fraley]

do you need strobing, or just flashes?

[dino g]

good luck with this brother, if you can somehow sync the strobe with your shutter, than that would be good, other than that, this is what happens with a electronic shutter. if you have more than one strobe going at odd intervals...you are stuck.

[Kevin Duggin]

I just need flashes , Lightning effect!

[Brandon Fraley]

good, then the key to make sure the flash "burns" for at least a frame. i believe flash bulbs do this fine. Or if you have a light you can hot strike safely, you can turn on and off a light.

[James T Mather]

Lightning strikes can control the duration of the flash so will work with the red. They can, I recently discovered, even be used as a constant light source with the phantom camera - with the flash duration set at maximum (8 secs I think) - giving you a whopping 70k output.

[SeanBrown]

Anyone use strobes with the red successfully? Jarad?

[Tyson Perkins]

Just to clarify an earlier statement, is it the case that if your strobe time is slower than the shutter speed of the camera (eg. 12 flashes in a second to the cameras 24 exposures) it won't suffer any of the CMOS artifacting? I have a music video shoot coming up that's relying heavily on strobe lighting and need a fairly conclusive answer (at least as a guideline to go into testing with)

Also, has anyone attempting this 'motion blur' technique, from an earlier forum thread?

It IS possible in camera, with a combination of hot lights and a synced flash/strobe system...
You'll need to set a Long exposure , plus setup a balanced strobe timed with the shutter. With a properly setup system you can get several images in a single pass per frame - or 1 crisp image, laid over a blurred frame, or even multiple images with varying degrees of opacity... But this is approach should ONLY be taken when you have LOTS of time on set to experiment, because it will look wrong until it's right, and you Never can predict how long that experimentation will take

It suits the script and more so it suits the very limited time that I have to churn it out in post. I guess im wondering if there is a mathematical approach to it or time lock lights that can be used for this purpose?

[Peter Mosiman]

Just to clarify an earlier statement, is it the case that if your strobe time is slower than the shutter speed of the camera (eg. 12 flashes in a second to the cameras 24 exposures) it won't suffer any of the CMOS artifacting? I have a music video shoot coming up that's relying heavily on strobe lighting and need a fairly conclusive answer (at least as a guideline to go into testing with)

Also, has anyone attempting this 'motion blur' technique, from an earlier forum thread?

It IS possible in camera, with a combination of hot lights and a synced flash/strobe system...
You'll need to set a Long exposure , plus setup a balanced strobe timed with the shutter. With a properly setup system you can get several images in a single pass per frame - or 1 crisp image, laid over a blurred frame, or even multiple images with varying degrees of opacity... But this is approach should ONLY be taken when you have LOTS of time on set to experiment, because it will look wrong until it's right, and you Never can predict how long that experimentation will take

It suits the script and more so it suits the very limited time that I have to churn it out in post. I guess im wondering if there is a mathematical approach to it or time lock lights that can be used for this purpose?

ask on CML. I'm sure you'd get a good answer from someone on there. I always have.

[Fredrik Callinggard]

ask on CML. I'm sure you'd get a good answer from someone on there. I always have.

Hahahaha quote of the day