Ha Ha ....the one thing I didn't try!

Thanks for your help, I set the shutter speed down to 100 and when someone waves their arms (fast action) the arm appears fragmented into horizontal sections. I'm assuming shutter speed is what cause it.

You are dealing with stark 120Hz (I think) strobing from the lights, which are really rectified DC coming from a full wave bridge. Speed up the shutter too much and you risk losing lighting on some frames altogether, 'cause there's no practical way to sync to the dimmer frequency. Motion blur (maybe a teeny bit of Gaussian too) should help, but will not make it go away entirely.

This is going to become more of a challenge for rolling-shutter camera manufacturers as these things become more common in general facility applications.

Hang on to that JVC DY-DV500U. It uses three CCD sensors. The newer cameras use CMOS sensors. From what I understand, CMOS may create a whole new set of nasty artifacts when filming under LED lighting. I'm not sure how people are dealing with this, but I sure have seen a lot of posts that mention the problem. Your current camera is much, much better in dealing with this issue, so make sure to treat it right so you can use it for as long as possible.

Thanks for the encouragement...I was starting to get some very good footage with that camera before the light change...now something else to learn. The last two projects have been useless, but I will keep trying until I find the best solution.

I've only had a brief brush with the new intelligent LED lights.

Unlike gelled halogens they produce very monochromatic light and that does seem to make it easier to clip a channel leading to ugly results. You may need to underexpose a bit to avoid this.
Also the light is very directional which makes the hot spots very hot and not much light goes elsewhere. Probably there's not much you can do from your end of the show. You might get better results by having a word with the lighting people. Adding some diffusion in front of the lights might help a lot without having a major impact on the lighting design.

Bob.

Thanks, I'll ask the lighting people if they can do that.

One other tip. Check the back focus on your 500 regularly.
Maybe it was just my bad luck but the one time I used that camera it was to shoot a stage show and I used the 500 as the "locked off" wide camera and the back focus was off by a big margin, what a fuzzy mess and it was not helped by what was on the stage, it was impossible to judge focus on the camera's LCD when the shot was zoomed out.

Bob.

If those LED lights are anything like my LED nightlights the people that invested in them might be very distraught to see the reduced light output as the months roll by. Hopefully that won't happen but in my case all the nightlights are so dim they are useless. They have been on 24/7 for about a year.
JJK

White LEDs suffer from much the same problems as fluro lights. The flourescent material wears out. Worse within a single light they can fade at different rates. What you seem to get left with is a dim yellow LED.

Bob.

Commercial LEDs for theaters are rated about 10,000 hours for the coloreds to 25,000 hours for the whites. Figuring 10 hours per week duty (which is a lot), they should last close to twenty years.
If they are run at a nominal 80% brightness, it could be even longer.

'Commercial LEDs for theaters are rated about 10,000 hours for the coloreds to 25,000 hours for the whites"

Good luck with that. The 10,000 hours for RGB instruments I'd believe but 25,000 for anything using white LEDs is very optimistic.
Like JJ I've got a light with 100 white LEDs in it that's been on during business hours for a couple of years and several LEDs are now just dim yellow. These are only 20mA 5mm LEDs that run cool, the bigger ones that require heatsinks and fan cooling I doubt are going to last as long and there's some real world evidence to back up the claim that those very long life expectancy figures are wrong.

Sure even at 2,000 hours it seems like a long time but will they only be on 10 hours per week? I find when the power draw is lower lights can be just left on longer and of course once the LEDs fail you're pretty much assured the whole instrument has to be replaced and some of the high powered LED instruments are over $5K

Bob.

Bob, interesting viewpoint but the lamps only pull 5 watts for the colored to about 20 watts for the whites (never seen them with heatsinks, some strips have a computer fan at one end). Remember, these are used mainly for CYC and borders, some effects, but not primary lighting. And yes, 10 hours per week is at the long end. Think 5 shows a week, and maybe a bit more time during tech week, but that's assuming the CYC is lit the whole time. By comparison, conventional stage lamps are replaced every 25-30 weeks, and a few even burn out before then.

Yes the back focus is impossible to adjust with the LCD that is my biggest problem using the camera. It has to be hooked up to a monitor.

"Remember, these are used mainly for CYC and borders, some effects, but not primary lighting"

OK, yes, those ones. Sure great use for LEDs there because the tungsten versions use lots of low powered lamps which do not last long at all especially if they're on dimmers. On top of that I'd imagine they're a pain to replace.

The ones I was talking about are used for primary lighting, probably more for arena sized events. I've seen one with 9 fans on the back of it....POA :)


Bob.