• Members 511 posts
    June 23, 2023, 4:04 p.m.

    The results depend not only on the ratio of exposure and cycle periods, but the depth of the cycle. When lights cut off and on quickly during a cycle, the mismatches with exposure time are the boldest. When the cycle is shallow due to phosphors or circuitry, then small mismatches may be more tolerable, except that with video, a luminance band that is shallow enough to be ignored by the brain in a still may be more visible when it is rolling through the frame.

  • Members 1737 posts
    June 23, 2023, 4:14 p.m.
    image.png

    PNG, 357.8 KB, uploaded by JimKasson on June 23, 2023.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 25, 2023, 10:11 a.m.

    Yes, that appears to be normal. See e.g.: dprevived.com/t/new-ways-with-shutter-travel-time-measurement/3402/

    There the shutter accelerates from about 5m/s at the start of exposure to about 10m/s in the centre of the frame, and remains at about 10m/s until the end of the frame.

    I have similar examples from other cameras.

    If the acceleration profiles of the first and second curtains can be sufficiently accurately matched, the exposure time is basically the delay between triggering the first curtain, and triggering the second curtain.

    At 1/8000.0 s, and 10m/s shutter, the gap between the first and second curtains is 1.25mm.
    At 5m/s, the gap between the first and second curtains is 0.625mm.

    That's with a premium, fast-moving FF shutter that allows 1/320 X-Sync. (Similar performance to D850 shutter).

    I haven't tried precise modelling, but I don't think EFCS-style bokeh truncation problems are possible at realistic f/numbers. Exposure uniformity is an issue, though - the exposure time varies across the frame at high shutter speeds.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 25, 2023, 10:28 a.m.

    Yes - the worst lighting for flicker is low-duty-cycle Pulse-Width-Modulation - strobe-like lighting. That can happen with domestic dimmable LEDs in some cases, but unfortunately also with professional (e.g. theatre) dimmable LED lighting where PWM is used to extend the dimming range below the range available from analogue regulation of the switching power supply that drives the LEDs.

  • Members 511 posts
    June 25, 2023, 1:51 p.m.

    I'm glad I'm a hobbyist, and not a person who is paid to take quality photos in venues with crap lighting systems.

    I have a hatred of mains-frequency deep cycling that predates experience with slow-rolling shutters. I discovered back in the '70s that automobile AM radios often had amazing sensitivity and tuning selectivity and I used to listen to stations 200-300 hundred miles away during the daytime and about 1500 miles at night, in my college dormitory with a car radio powered by a 12V filtered power supply. Then, they updated the lighting in my dorm with dimmers, and I could only hear local stations when my roomates wanted dimmed light.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 28, 2023, 11:02 a.m.

    If you have 22000 e- per green pixel, the pixel standard deviation is about sqrt(22000) ~= 148 e-

    If we then average these 10000 green pixels, the standard deviation of the average (attributable to shot noise) will be about 148/sqrt(10000) ~= 1.48 e-

    The ratio of the standard deviation (attributable to shot noise) to the mean is about 1.48 / 22000 = 0.000067 (about 0.0001 EV).

    Which is somewhat below the "rms" shot-to-shot noise that you are seeing (except maybe at high shutter speeds).


    Getting the variation in the standard deviation of the replicates down to a level where we can reason about the standard deviations of different treatments needs quite a few replicates: The 𝜒2 confidence intervals for the population standard deviation start out very wide.

    Try: www.statskingdom.com/confidence-interval-calculator.html with 'type:' "Standard deviation confidence interval" and 'Data is:' "SD, n".

    This is why I usually end up doing 8 or 16 replicates of each test condition. (And why I use an intervalometer a lot in these tests).

    With 4 replicates, a 90% confidence interval for the population standard deviation is [0.62s, 2.92s].
    With 8 replicates, a 90% confidence interval for the population standard deviation is [0.71s, 1.80s].
    With 16 replicates, a 90% confidence interval for the population standard deviation is [0.77s, 1.44s].

    - Where s is the sample estimate of the population standard deviation.

    (This being the internet, for all I know, you could be a professor of statistics. If I'm teaching you to suck eggs, I apologise.)

    Yeah.


    Edited: I misunderstood the number of pixels in the patches Bernard is using - I thought they were 25000 pixels, but it seems they are 10000 pixels.
    Edited: Hurried to fix the above, and made another silly error.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 28, 2023, 11:28 a.m.

    Can you be more explicit? Do you mean statistical significance?

    The differences I get are quite large compared to the standard deviation of the replicates. The replicate standard deviation estimate is the "G sd EV" column. We can expect the mean EVs for each case to be distributed with sd roughly a quarter of the corresponding "G sd EV" value.

    With 16 replicates per treatment, a 90% confidence interval for the treatment mean is: (sample mean) +/- 0.44*(replicate standard deviation).

    Stopping down the 15-150 to f/5.6, compared to using the 60mm f/2 wide open adds about 0.01EV noise. (I don't have a manual-only lens that I can use on F-mount).

    The D7200 tests I did went down to 11EV (above 1DN). At 11EV, the variation in the replicate means attributable to Poisson noise is in the 8E-5 EV ballpark. So negligible. I could/should use more of the available dynamic range.

    I mentioned black level errors before. If I have a 0.5DN black level error at 11EV, that's a 0.00035EV error; if I have a 0.5DN black level error at 6EV, that's a 0.01EV error in a measurement near 6EV. That's at the level of effects I'm trying to detect. I could try gettting more fancy with the statistics, but they would be less robust.

    Me neither.

    - Which is exactly what I was trying to do when I fell down this rabbit hole. I was particularly looking for EFCS problems.

  • Removed user
    June 28, 2023, 2:32 p.m.

    A related question:

    I was testing a lens in bright sunlight the other day.

    i had set the shutter time to 1/6000sec - Manual mode.

    When converting RGB and displaying the EXIF in an app or two, I saw two shutter-related values: 1/6000sec and 1/66sec.

    The 1/66sec value was called "Integration Time".

    Anybody know what that is exactly? Any references?

    The camera is a Sigma SD9 but I've seen the matter mentioned on other cameras while I was briefly searching for info ...

  • Members 511 posts
    June 28, 2023, 3:06 p.m.

    My first guess is that this is how long each photosite was actively "on", taking charge; IOW, the underlying e-shutter "exposure" time which is partially (mostly, in this case) masked by the mechanical curtains. That number is what you might use to predict dark current noise. Remember, in any digital camera with mechanical shutter curtains, there photosites are active for far longer than they are exposed to light, with fast shutter speeds.

  • Removed user
    June 28, 2023, 3:47 p.m.

    Thanks John.

    After using better search terms, I found it to the time between the first opening of the "slit" to the closure of the last slit in a rolling shutter.

    rolling shutter exposure

    Meaning that, when set to high speed over the 'sync' speed, the rolling shutter effect would still be possible from a moving object..

    Ref: www.1stvision.com/cameras/IDS/IDS-manuals/en/basics-shutter-mode.html

    One would naïvely think that "Integration time" is also the camera 'sync speed', but not so on my camera which lists 1/180sec in the spec.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 28, 2023, 6:25 p.m.

    John Sheehy's idea makes more sense.

    The time between the earliest exposure of any part of the sensor to the latest exposure of any part of the sensor =
    (Shutter travel time AKA rolling shutter) + (exposure time).

    Your SD9 has an X-sync limit of 1/180. So the Shutter travel time is less than 5.5ms. Probably about 4.8ms.

    Your exposure time is "1/6000", or something near 0.2ms.

    So the time between the earliest exposure of any part of the sensor to the latest exposure of any part of the sensor =
    something less than 6ms, probably a bit less than 5ms.

    Definitely nowhere near the 15ms implied by "1/66" s.

  • Removed user
    June 28, 2023, 6:36 p.m.

    JohnV, do you have a reference that supports the above conclusion?

    Or a ref. that tells us how exif's IntegrationTime 0x0423 is measured or calculated?

    I thought the image I posted explained that "Integration Time" is equal to 'exposure time' plus 'readout duration' ...

  • Members 1737 posts
    June 28, 2023, 6:56 p.m.

    I don't know of any cameras with a focal plane mechanical shutter that can be read out as rapidly as your drawing indicates.

  • Members 128 posts
    June 28, 2023, 7:21 p.m.

    There aren't any times on that diagram.

    It looks to be exactly like a diagram of the timing of an exposure using electronic shutter, on a camera which reads a row at a time - a typical Active-Pixel CMOS sensor.

    In the case illustrated, the exposure time is longer than the (readout-speed limited) (electronic) shutter travel time, so there is a window when the entire sensor is exposed, and the vendor says this is where you should put your flash pulse if you want uniform flash illumination.

    We could draw a nearly identical diagram for a film SLR with a mechanical "focal-plane" shutter, when the shutter speed is slower than the X-sync speed.

    I have used industrial video cameras in exactly the manner illustrated. The flash freezes the (fast-moving) production line, and gives the effect of global shutter.

  • Members 1737 posts
    June 28, 2023, 7:27 p.m.

    I don't know of any mechanical FP shutters that move slowly enough that sensor readout can take place in the time it takes for the shutter to scan the frame. So I don't need the timings on the drawing.

  • Removed user
    June 28, 2023, 7:32 p.m.

    I doubt that their drawing is to scale.

    Jim, do you have a reference that tells us how exif's IntegrationTime 0x0423 is measured or calculated?..

  • Members 1737 posts
    June 28, 2023, 7:36 p.m.

    Sorry, I don't

  • Members 1737 posts
    June 28, 2023, 7:36 p.m.

    Are you saying the time axis is nonlinear? You are talking about the mechanical shutter in your camera, right?