ELI5- why do screens/lights flicker in videos taken by phone or even yt vids, but not in movies and professional productions?
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Explaining like your five? Here we go…
Funny enough, all man-made light flickers, or turns off and on really really fast. Our eyes see at about 24 frames, or pictures, in one second. That’s why when things move faster than that, it looks blurry, kind of like why helicopter blades or the hubcaps of cars blur in motion.
Now, ever turn on your fan, and it goes faster and faster, then it looks like it’s moving backwards? That’s because the fan is turning so fast, your eyes only see the fan 24 times a second. So when your eye sees it the next time, the fans blades are in a different position, and it ‘appears’ to move backwards!
Now, with certain cameras, you can adjust something called “shutter speed”. When you take a picture, the shutter speed is basically how long the camera ‘blinks’ in a second.
So blink right now. That’s like taking a picture.
Now blink really fast! That’s what a video camera is doing. It’s taking pictures and putting them together. That’s the basics of a video.
And you can tell both cameras to ‘blink slower’ or ‘blink faster’.
Now, TV’s and monitors and even florescent light ‘blinks’ at a certain speed. If you tell your camera the blink at the same speed, your camera will show you what your eyes see…a steady light, or a spinning fan, or a solid glowing computer screen.
If you tell your camera to blink at a DIFFERENT speed, your camera can show you all kinds of things—a blinking computer monitor, or fluorescent light being red instead of white. You can even make a flying helicopter look like a floating without turning the blades!
Go ahead and try it out!
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