Not using electronic shutter again

[hteasley]

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So I set the electronic shutter on the CL, for completely silent shooting, and a bunch of photos have bad banding in them. I took a few of my daughter on the couch, and saw terrible banding:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4wizwu0llbr9bw5/electronicshutterbug1.png?dl=0

 

I didn't suspect the electronic shutter, but just now, I was just testing some things out, and I saw it again, and I thought to try to find the culprit, and it is indeed the electronic shutter. Below is the same scene, without and with electronic shutter.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b05mutst08q4yhn/electronicshutterbug2.png?dl=0

 

I'm guessing this might be an "electronic shutter + certain artificial lights" thing: the first, my daughter is a few feet away from a large television, and the the test images, I have a couple computer monitors behind me that might be influencing the scene lighting, so maybe it's a 60hz refresh thing.

 

But I hate it, as all right thinking people should. Even if it is only in certain circumstances, neither of these were photos where it would have occurred to me to change the shutter setting because of the lights present. Which means I'm just not going to use it. Pity, as it's nice and silent.

[LocalHero1953]

Well, you could always just use it on those occasions when you have lighting that doesn't cause banding.

Deciding never to use it just because it doesn't work in some circumstances is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's like saying you won't ever use the mechanical shutter because it makes too much noise in a theatre.

It's easy to take a few shots and review the images to see if the lighting is OK. Both your examples are very visible at small scale.

Edited August 12, 2018 by LocalHero1953

[wda]

Not a typical subject for a test, in my opinion. Lots of flickering light sources coupled with faulty white balance. I suggest you try again in daylight.

[jaapv]

I think we should not dismiss electronic shutter completely,  but in my book it is a mistake to use it as the default mode.

 

Treat it as an option to be used when you need it, like in a church or a concert, or an extremely fast shutter speed, or when using tracking focus (it makes TF more responsive).

[hteasley]

Well, you could always just use it on those occasions when you have lighting that doesn't cause banding.

 

But that's sort of my point. In the test I did, I was not expecting any of the lighting to be an issue at all. A strategy of "shoot and chimp" is a strategy that sounds to me like "just don't use it". It's just another new thing to make pictures turn out wrong on an inconsistent basis, which means it will be hard to develop an instinct for it. For me, anyway.

[FrozenInTime]

When using sequential read electronic shutters under artificial electronic lighting, the shutter speed needs to be low enough to average out the flickering.

The light here is an Ikea electronically dimmable LED

 

 

 

The one with banding is 1/160s , without 1/13s on TL2 ( CL will be the same )

Test your lighting ... you may be okay at half the AC line frequency.

[lct]

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Silent shutter is my default mode on all my modern cameras but i have a "shutter" user profile in case of flickering light. No problem so far.

[FrozenInTime]

Silent shutter is my default mode on all my modern cameras but i have a "shutter" user profile in case of flickering light. No problem so far.

Not yet tested the TL/CL electronic shutter with moving targets.

Is it any better than the Ricoh GXR ?

 

This shot below taken a few years ago shows hints of the ‘Lartigue’ racing car effect.

 

[lct]

My moving targets are mostly kids but i have never got this problem with my Leica, Sony, Fuji and Panasonic cameras so far.

[LocalHero1953]

But that's sort of my point. In the test I did, I was not expecting any of the lighting to be an issue at all. A strategy of "shoot and chimp" is a strategy that sounds to me like "just don't use it". It's just another new thing to make pictures turn out wrong on an inconsistent basis, which means it will be hard to develop an instinct for it. For me, anyway.

2 weeks ago I shot an entire vocal recital in a London church using electronic shutter. Fortunately the artificial light did not cause problems.

But if I'd decided I couldn't electronic shutter, I wouldn't have got the photos, to the disappointment of the performers who had asked me.

Yes, it is your choice - but you will miss opportunities.

The CL is no different to most other cameras out there. The Sony A9 is the only one that is significantly better, I believe..

[ramarren]

I set the electronic shutter to EXTENDED ... that way, it's there when I'm trying to extend what the mechanical shutter can do. No one ever notices when I make photos anyway, unless they're watching me specifically, so what the heck do I need "silent" operation for?

[mike3996]

I set the electronic shutter to EXTENDED ... that way, it's there when I'm trying to extend what the mechanical shutter can do. No one ever notices when I make photos anyway, unless they're watching me specifically, so what the heck do I need "silent" operation for?

The extended operation some bodies offer is a very reasonable option to set and forget. Indoors where you have banding you never have the luxury of needing fast shutter speeds so you stay on mechanical. Outdoors you still risk rolling shutter but it's a risk that realizes more seldomly (YMMV) than the banding problem.

[scott kirkpatrick]

A while ago I posted a crowd scene under outdoor streetlighting (a fairgrounds, so fairly bright, probably LEDs because the color balance was reasonable) and got horrific banding at 120 Hz.  Tonight, eating dessert outside in the evening, lit by one 9x9 array of warm tone LEDS and using the electronic shutter, no banding at all at shutter speeds from 1/25 to 1/150.  And the watermelon was delicious:

 

C1080270 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr CL 11-23@14

Edited August 18, 2018 by scott kirkpatrick

[scott kirkpatrick]

Looking back to the earlier posts in this thread, I see two very different effects.  The usual LED banding is at twice the power line frequency, which for 50 or 60 Hz gives you 5 or 6 horizontal black lines.  The Ikea dimmable LED shots in the first post of this thread have many more bands, and the effect is weaker.  I understand that that is because the dimmable LEDs change the average light intensity by cycling the lights in short pulses at a much higher frequency than the line frequency.  Here's my example of the 2X line frequency effect:

 

C1080026 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

[Gerardjan]

Well, you could always just use it on those occasions when you have lighting that doesn't cause banding.

Deciding never to use it just because it doesn't work in some circumstances is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's like saying you won't ever use the mechanical shutter because it makes too much noise in a theatre.

It's easy to take a few shots and review the images to see if the lighting is OK. Both your examples are very visible at small scale.

 

It's always on on my CL, never had a problem.