Bus photography technical help (desti blinds!)

[Ace Of Pacer]

Background: been photographing buses for pleasure for about 15 years, mainly with digital cameras but in past couple of years with iPhone since their cameras got better (albeit zoom not viable).
Objective: decent photos for personal use (not for publication so don’t need to be amazing)
Problem: modern blinds (with some exceptions) are a nightmare and don’t come out properly. For some reason Transdev Blazefield blinds work perfectly (manufacturer / refresh rate related?) but First West Yorkshire StreetDecks (and almost all the Arriva Yorkshire fleet) and the like are impossble, and the pixelated / missing destis in photos really annoy me.

I’d be prepared to buy another digital camera and use instead of iPhone if I was confident it would resolve the issue. So the question is: is there either a camera on the market, or some standard settings re: exposure of whatever you can use on any given camera, which will eliminate this lottery of whether you get half a desti, a scrambled desti, no desti at all, or the holy grail of a fully legible desti?

Thanks for your help, and you’ll note from the above I’m a point and click non-technical shooter, so don’t be afraid to assume no knowledge when you answer!

 

[py_megapixel]

Most LED matrix displays aren't actually all illuminated all at once. Different sections are lit up in quick succession, effectively meaning that all the sections of the display are flashing (albeit extremely quickly and slightly out of sync with each other). Because of persistence of vision, if this flashing is fast enough, humans can't detect it and the whole display appears lit at once. Cameras don't have persistence of vision - they just store whatever light was present for the duration of time the shutter* was open. This means that if the shutter speed is too fast (meaning the shutter is open for too short of a time), some sections of the display won't have been illuminated during the time the shutter was open, so they don't appear lit in the photograph.

The solution to this is simply to set your shutter speed to be slow enough that all of the display will have been illuminated at some point. The ideal speed varies based on the display.

To my mind,the main disadvantage to this (taking into account that modern phones will do quite a competent job of adjusting automatically set settings to suit whatever settings you enter manually) is that you have to hold the camera steadier to avoid blurring.

On my phone (which is made by Samsung, not Apple), I can adjust the shutter speed by selecting "Pro" mode in the camera app, then an icon appears for it at the bottom. I imagine there is an equivalent for iPhones but I couldn't tell you where it is as I don't have one at the moment.

* The terminology of a "shutter" in a camera comes from when when cameras had film. There was a physical shutter which blocked light from hitting the light sensitive film. To take a picture, the shutter was opened to expose the film to light for a certain amount of time. The "shutter speed" refers to the length of time the shutter was open. I don't think modern phone cameras have physical shutters, but the shutter speed function has a similar effect.

No doubt some photography buffs will be along shortly to tell me why I'm completely wrong about all of this, but it seems to work for me!

 

[WY Bus Spotter]

Background: been photographing buses for pleasure for about 15 years, mainly with digital cameras but in past couple of years with iPhone since their cameras got better (albeit zoom not viable).
Objective: decent photos for personal use (not for publication so don’t need to be amazing)
Problem: modern blinds (with some exceptions) are a nightmare and don’t come out properly. For some reason Transdev Blazefield blinds work perfectly (manufacturer / refresh rate related?) but First West Yorkshire StreetDecks (and almost all the Arriva Yorkshire fleet) and the like are impossble, and the pixelated / missing destis in photos really annoy me.

I’d be prepared to buy another digital camera and use instead of iPhone if I was confident it would resolve the issue. So the question is: is there either a camera on the market, or some standard settings re: exposure of whatever you can use on any given camera, which will eliminate this lottery of whether you get half a desti, a scrambled desti, no desti at all, or the holy grail of a fully legible desti?

Thanks for your help, and you’ll note from the above I’m a point and click non-technical shooter, so don’t be afraid to assume no knowledge when you answer!

Hi, there's no easy solution unfortunately.

The reason is to do with the flicker rate of the LEDs used on the blind (how quickly the LEDs flash on and off). Transdev and certain other companies use a higher quality of product so a camera (even at a high shutter speed) won't have an issue capturing the display.

Arriva and First amongst others use poor quality LEDs that flicker a lot slower (not visible to the human eye), so it makes it more likely to photograph it when 'off', if that makes sense.

Using a slower shutter speed solves the issue, however of course this can be a problem if you're wanting to capture buses on the move.

Hopefully I've explained good enough, it's a hard thing to explain in text.

I get around it by using a fast 'burst' on my camera. It will take about 10 photos a second, and at least one of them should have the desti working.

 

[busesrusuk]

Background: been photographing buses for pleasure for about 15 years, mainly with digital cameras but in past couple of years with iPhone since their cameras got better (albeit zoom not viable).
Objective: decent photos for personal use (not for publication so don’t need to be amazing)
Problem: modern blinds (with some exceptions) are a nightmare and don’t come out properly. For some reason Transdev Blazefield blinds work perfectly (manufacturer / refresh rate related?) but First West Yorkshire StreetDecks (and almost all the Arriva Yorkshire fleet) and the like are impossble, and the pixelated / missing destis in photos really annoy me.

I’d be prepared to buy another digital camera and use instead of iPhone if I was confident it would resolve the issue. So the question is: is there either a camera on the market, or some standard settings re: exposure of whatever you can use on any given camera, which will eliminate this lottery of whether you get half a desti, a scrambled desti, no desti at all, or the holy grail of a fully legible desti?

Thanks for your help, and you’ll note from the above I’m a point and click non-technical shooter, so don’t be afraid to assume no knowledge when you answer!

Digi blinds are an increasing problem for photographers. You can capture blinds but need to amend the settings on your camera. Mobitec blinds generally come out at higher shutter speeds but others require changes to the shutter speeds to capture properly. Most blinds will come out OK at a slow shutter speed such as 1/125.

This obviously restricts your pictures to mostly stationary shots or very slow-moving pics. The West Yorks and Arriva buses in my ex[erience will come out at speeds of up to 1/500 but sometimes you need to take multiple shots in the hope you will capture the blind in one of the shots. Many photographers "cheat" these days by taking a pic of a blind on a stationary bus and then "paste", via photoshop, that blind onto a moving shot where the blind hadn't come out.

Personally, I don't do that (not least because the latest version of photoshop that I have appears to be different to what my mates have and no end of "idiots" guides that I have been given seem to work on this latest version of photoshop).

Feel free to trawl through my flickr site and where pics have been taken with a digital camera (everything since Oct 2012) you will see the speeds at which the pics have been taken. Many companies' buy different manufacturers blind displays that have different characteristics so you can't always say that you can use the same settings based on an individual company. Abellio is one such company in London that uses different equipment. Their Caetano bodied electric buses are impossible to photograph at anything above 1/125 whilst their latest batch of Switch electric buses can be photographed at much higher speeds.

Link to my flickr site here:

Keith Wood

Explore Keith Wood’s 6,470 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

Hope that helps...

 

[Robertj21a]

If the vehicle is static use 1/60th and most screens will come out ok.

If it's moving and you're using, say, 1/500th you'll need to take a number of shots very quickly (even then many won't come out).

As mentioned above this still won't cover every possible type - but it probably covers 90%

 

[AM9]

Many cameras now have a burst photo mode where a sequence of stills is taken at 30 frames per second. you can then review in camera and save individual shots then so grabbing a few shots and building up a composite of the bus showing the blind can with practice show a steady picture of the display.

 

[Ken H]

If you are using a slow shutter speed consider a tripod. Or a monopod (stick with the camera on the end) to remove camera shake. If not lean against a lamp post or sit on a bench. In fact anything to steady the camera.

 

[Contains Nuts]

Transdev use Mobitec destination displays, whereas First, Arriva and Stagecoach all use Hanover displays. The Mobitec displays have a different refresh rate on the LED’s which makes them better to photograph.

Operators tend to standardise on one system or another, so it’s no surprise that you don’t have issues photographing particular operators but then have lots of issues with others.

As suggested above the solutions are to either use ‘burst’ mode to create a composite picture, or slow the ‘shutter speed’ setting slightly, assuming one of these options is available to you.

 

[GusB]

Mod note: While this thread is specifically referring to bus photography, we feel that it would benefit from a wider audience, so we're going to move it to the Photography Advice section.