Red’s Rolling Shutter and Flash Strobes at FreshDV

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Red’s Rolling Shutter and Flash Strobes

Published by Matthew Jeppsen December 13th, 2007 in News

The Red Digital Cinema camera uses a CMOS sensor with a rolling shutter. One of the criticisms of the camera is the fact it is subject to rolling shutter artifacts in some situations. Now, I should note that I am not bashing Red…to be clear, every camera has limitations. Even film cameras can exhibit shutter-related artifacts. The important thing is to arm yourself with knowledge, so you know how to avoid situations which will stress the equipment you are using.

To that end, here is a little background info on Red’s rolling shutter: Understanding Rolling Shutter Artifacts.
That link talks about the design of the shutter and how it operates. It also offers a few suggestions for minimizing the effect. And if you’ve never seen the effect, here’s a video that shows the split-screen-strobe issue pretty clearly. More discussion at Reduser.

7 Responses to “Red’s Rolling Shutter and Flash Strobes”

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1 locutus_jones Dec 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

What’s this? I distinctly remember reading that the Red had a global shutter, not a rolling shutter. I suppose it could have been wishful thinking on the part of the author making the claim, but it strikes me as odd that it would have a true rolling shutter. Last I heard, Peter Jackson was picking up a raft of Reds for Effects Use. Wouldn’t a rolling shutter be problematic for effects use, with all the match move, etc?
Am I just confused?
2 Matthew Jeppsen Dec 13th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

There was some confusion among forum users in the early days about RED having a global shutter, but it does in fact have a rolling shutter (as you can see from the above video clip).

-Matt Jeppsen
3 Casey James Dec 14th, 2007 at 11:49 am

Oh my that is lovely news… Looks terrible (though the girlie girl is quite the darling.) Maybe we’ll be able to find these it pawn shops in a few years for pocket change… Maybe I’m exaggerating, but 17k might as well be 17m as far as my pocket lint is concerned.

Now let just hope strobes and queasy cameras make a huge comeback.
4 locutus_jones Dec 14th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Bummer. I have been dealing with a very slight jello effect in my sony hdv footage. It’s no big deal till you try to stabilize or track the footage in after effects, then it is a real problem. Rolling Shutter is a deal killer.

17k sounded like too good of a deal to be true. I’m looking forward to reading ProLost’s post on this.
5 Matthew Jeppsen Dec 14th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

Some discussion here about the HV20’s rolling shutter (including a link to Stu’s take on that issue): http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/consumer-camcorders-nice-post-t11669.html?s=5ea997a7142bd3fe7560cc3fcada9903&

-MJ
6 grr paavola Dec 26th, 2007 at 7:53 am

To be fair the red does scan the image way faster than hv20 or sonys hdv cameras.
7 Randy Tinfow Feb 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pm

With this camera I wouldn’t shoot with a strobe. Too easy to add it in post, especially if you’ve got RAW
latitude to play with.

Shooting a song like City of Blinding Lights at a live venue wouldn’t work, of course. But I’ll take raw latitude
on most days.

RT