Scoreboard

[Dave_s]

Anyone know why the scores are blank when I shoot the Scoreboards at our basketball games? Funny thing is, one scoreboard works, the other one doesn't. They look identical.
Any ideas? Dave

Because the lights on a score board aren't constantly running.... they actually flicker on and off... pulsate if you will, just in a frequency our eye cannot detect, but at a fast enough shutter speed, you will catch them in the "off" position.

If you don't believe me, a simple trick is to get a dark room, a light bulb on a rope and swing it in a circle really fast... You will see it only working part of the time.

[Dave_s]

Thanks for the info.
but one scoreboard works every time. The other one never works.
Dave

Originally Posted by Dave_s

Thanks for the info.
but one scoreboard works every time. The other one never works.
Dave

Might be timing... not sure.

Are you shooting in P or Auto mode?

If so, it might be metering differently for each screen.

Slower shutter = more chance to get the full frequency.

[Dave_s]

I hadn't though of slowing the shutter down.
I always shoot in manual mode. And for basketball that requires a fast shutter.
The strange thing is, one works all the time.
Thanks again.
Dave

Are the score boards made up of different types of lights?

[BCampbell]

They are probably different types of displays.

LED displays (all, as far as I know) operate by flashing rows, banks, or individual lights on and off at a high rate of speed, to take advantage of what's called "persistence of vision"; the same effect that makes us think that pictures displayed at 25 frames per second are actually a moving image. The inital reason this was done was, I believe, because sending the information to turn an entire matrix of LEDs on and off at once required too much information to keep pushing between the display and the controller, so methods were devised to flash banks or rows so quickly that, to us, the result looks like a cohesive image. Not sure if that's strictly necessary anymore but that's how most work.

So, as mentioned above, slowing down your shutter would capture all of the on-off sequences to show what the human eye sees. The other scoreboard may be a different type of LED display, use old fashioned bulbs, or it could be some type of screen (like a TV). Hard to say without looking at examples.