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posted by martyb on Saturday July 29 2017, @06:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the need-a-faster-flicker dept.

Interesting article at Business Insider on why we don't like LED bulbs:

There's a handy trick for reading station signs that otherwise fly past in a blur as you travel in a high-speed train. Look at one side of the window and then immediately at the other side of the window. When you change your gaze, your eyes will automatically make a rapid jerking movement, known as a saccade. If the direction of the saccade is the same as that of the train, your eyes will freeze the image for a split second, long enough to read the station name if you time things right.

Saccades are very fast movements of the eyes. Their exact speed depends on the size of the movement, but large saccades can move the eyes at the same rate as a high-speed train. The image of the station name becomes visible because it is travelling at the same speed as the eye, and the images before and after the saccade are blurred and so don't interfere with the image of the sign. This shows us that our vision is still working when our eyes move rapidly during saccades.

Scientists used to think we could see no more than about 90 flashes of light a second but now we know it's more like 2,000 because the eyes move so rapidly when we change gaze from one point to another. During the eye movement, the flicker of light creates a pattern that we can see. And this has some surprising consequences for our health thanks to the way some types of lighting can affect us. In particular, it could discourage people from using more energy-saving LED lightbulbs.

Most lighting is electric and powered by an alternating current supply, which makes the bulbs continually dim and then brighten again at a very fast rate. Unlike filament lamps and to a lesser extent fluorescent lamps, LEDs don't just dim but effectively turn on and off completely (unless the current is maintained in some way).

The answer is not to make them less piercing?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday July 29 2017, @11:32AM (5 children)

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Saturday July 29 2017, @11:32AM (#546213) Homepage

    "Isn't enough" for what?

    24fps is clearly different to 60fps. But it's not inherently bad, it's just a certain style that we've become used to seeing as "film."

    There are all kinds of ways in which visual entertainment differs from real life. Frame rate is just one of them.

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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday July 29 2017, @11:57AM (4 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Saturday July 29 2017, @11:57AM (#546216)
    It's something we subconciously learn, just same as we do for many other things we experience on a regular basis without any form of formal tuition as we grow up. Once developed, there's almost certainly a section of the optical cortex that recognizes a given frame rate being displayed on a screen as an acceptable simulacrum of the real world with a certain "feel" to it. A skilled filmmaker will know this and factor the choice of framerate into their choice of media, taking into account the subject matter, where it will be displayed (and on what equipment), and what compromises will be required when the optimal setup isn't available. Peter Jackson got a lot of coverage for using 48fps instead of the more traditional 24fps, but if that kind of thing interests you then take a look into the compromises [dpreview.com] that have resulted from Chris Nolan's use of 65mm film for "Dunkirk" with projection in modern cinemas. If you're planning on seeing the film on the big screen, you may want to consider your choice of venue with a little more care than normal.
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    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday July 29 2017, @08:01PM (3 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday July 29 2017, @08:01PM (#546401) Journal

      One guy chooses a format that is rarely found.
      Is he a prophet and knows the world to come, or just a cranky guy with a screw you attitude?

      All this pontificating about non-conformist director's choices, which, in the long run, had zero effect on the industry, seems like elitists arguing the merits of Matanuska Green Beans vs the dwarf French bean.

      Was Nolan PAID to shoot big medium by the 4K TV manufacturers?

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      • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday July 29 2017, @08:18PM (2 children)

        by zocalo (302) on Saturday July 29 2017, @08:18PM (#546407)
        Nolan's pretty open about it; he prefers film over digital. How a viewer watches it is up to them, but for some people seeing it as the director intended is the preferred format no matter what. Unless it's George Lucas, of course, in which case Han shot first and the original version rules.

        I doubt very much that he got paid by 4K TV manufacturers though, or any other director using large format film stock for that matter. They'd probably much rather that directors used digital cameras, or at least film stock that matched their preferred 16:9 or 21:9 format screens to avoid the inevitable compromises that are going to result later on when the movie goes to disc and download. There's simply no way that you are going to be able to watch any movies shot that way, Dunkirk only being one example, without either cropping the picture to widescreen, compressing the image vertically to widescreen, or letterboxing it to left and right.
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        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:20PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:20PM (#546446)

          There's simply no way that you are going to be able to watch any movies shot that way, Dunkirk only being one example, without either cropping the picture to widescreen, compressing the image vertically to widescreen, or letterboxing it to left and right.

          The film would have been shot with frameguides for multiple aspect ratio's - cinematographers are not stupid.

          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:06PM

            by Immerman (3985) on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:06PM (#546729)

            That's great and all - but every framing will show a different range of details around the edges, and you can't optimize your shot for all of them simultaneously. So, there will inevitably be one aspect ratio chosen as the "preferred" one, with more effort will be spent on making that entire picture as impactful as possible, and all other framings will be less true to the intent.