Silent Shooting Banding Issues - EOS R vs R3 vs R5 MkII

[MustardRocket95]

Hi!  I do a lot of orchestra/symphony photography and have run into more and more LED light upgrades in the concert halls.  I use the Silent Mode on my EOS R to be invisble during the concerts, but now that the lights are LED, I run into banding issues.

My question is, is the R3 and new R5 MkII better with this because of the faster and stackked sensors?  Do the cameras have other tech that help with the banding in full electronic mode?  My EOS R has the Anti Flicker option, but that is not allowed in Silent Shooting.

Any direction or guidance towards a solution to this would be great!  Thank you.

[John_Q]

Hello MustardRocket95,

While stacked sensors certainly will push the envelope further in terms of speed, the best option is to enable anti-flicker on the cameras. The EOS R3 does allow you to enable anti-flicker shooting in combination with the Silent shutter function as well. I don't have the full documentation for the EOS R5 Mark II as of yet, so I could not verify that with that particular camera model.

[MustardRocket95]

Thanks, John.  I will wait for an R5 Mk II to hit the shelves so I can verify that.  I think the R5 is a better fit for my business... crossing my fingers.

[p4pictures · Accepted solution]

What you are experiencing is high frequency flickering from the LED lights. Standard anti-flicker is designed for slower flicker up to around 60Hz maximum. Some cameras EOS R6 Mark II for sure, have high frequency anti-flicker shooting option that allows the shutter speed to be adjusted in small intervals to avoid the flicker of such high frequency LED lights. For example you can set 1/100.3 or 1/100.6 as smaller increments around 1/100s to avoid banding.  

I’m not sure the EOS R3 has this function, but I would expect it to be included in the EOS R5 Mark II.