Stage LED Lighting for Video Production

[Esoteric]

Yeah, you can make any LED flicker on video if you want. "Flicker Free" of course just means that on common settings units won't flicker.

You can match colors in using LEDs in theater. You just have to trust your eye and work with slightly different gels.

 

[dj41354]

Yeah, you can make any LED flicker on video if you want. "Flicker Free" of course just means that on common settings units won't flicker.

I'm pretty sure this isn't right. Some of the newest LED fixtures have crazy high PWM frequencies. One of my associates recently demoed a couple of fixtures at ESPN, and they couldn't get any video flicker using state of the art video equipment. They tried their best to get it to flicker, switching off "filters" (on the camera), using "raw" video, pointing the fixture into the camera, and trying different brightnesses... no flicker. My associate did say they were amazed.. evidently they weren't aware there were true "flicker free" LED fixtures either.

 

[Esoteric]

I'm pretty sure this isn't right. Some of the newest LED fixtures have crazy high PWM frequencies. One of my associates recently demoed a couple of fixtures at ESPN, and they couldn't get any video flicker using state of the art video equipment. They tried their best to get it to flicker, switching off "filters" (on the camera), using "raw" video, pointing the fixture into the camera, and trying different brightnesses... no flicker. My associate did say they were amazed.. evidently they weren't aware there were true "flicker free" LED fixtures either.

I would love to know what unit this is. I have worked with every unit out there that I know of, and through some combinations of settings I have been able to make them flicker.

 

[dj41354]

I would love to know what unit this is. I have worked with every unit out there that I know of, and through some combinations of settings I have been able to make them flicker.

They were BrickBlaster Pro's: LED Fixtures | The Black Tank He demoed a RGBW, a WNC, and a UV (black light) version (They were looking at all the latest LED fixtures for a new studio they're building).
I helped develop these lights, and the tech specs are top shelf, including a PWM frequency of 8Khz with a resolution of 13bits.

They're new (were introduced last year at LDI), so not alot of people know about them yet... but they're starting to get out there.

 

[dannyn]

I have seen video guys be able to tune to the opposite refresh rate of the LED fixtures, so they are still flickering but just like the human eye, does not see this, the camera refreshes at a rate that it is not seen on the video.