Hi Nikhil,I saw your post pretty late, as we were busy in a shoot. Ok, whatever you hadasked is very relevant…I will try to answer from whatever I had read andunderstood. Before that, don’t apologise for being anal. In life, its much better tobe anal about something, than just be ‘banal’.Ok, we are not making any herculean task to ‘exactly’ have two pulses of light fallonto the film plane. We are very much restricted by physics and economics that we get only those two pulses of light (It is due to the fact that we decided toproduce and distribute electricity as 50Hz AC). The two pulses of light is aRosetta stone only at 24 fps, otherwise it can range from 1 pulse of light to 100pulses of light on a 50Hz AC current.Flickers appear whenever there is an uneven exposure in the frames. Exposuredepends on the amount of light and the amount of time. If the amount of light which falls on the film plane is consistent over an amount of time, then there willbe no flicker. When it is not so, flickers will arise.As mentioned already, the light pulses at twice the mains frequency ie in a 50Hzcycle, the light pulses 100 times. This means that at every half cycle of the of current the light pulses once. If we correlate it with the normal frame rate of 24fps, then,At 1/24

of a second, the light pulses 4 times andAt 1/48

of a second , which is the amount of time the film plane will remainexposed, there will be two light pulses.Now, as long as the light pulse rate remains as an

integer multiple

of the framerate, then there will be no flicker. That is as long as you chose one of the belowframe rate, irrespective of the shutter, there should not be flicker. In this casewhat one is trying to do is to match up with the mains frequency. There are somecaveats when you try to do this.1.The camera should run on crystal controlled motor2.The generator should preferably crystal controlled. (They did have somecrystal controlled gennies, then when the electronic ballast for HMIarrived, they dispensed with them)3.Extreme vigilance should be exercised to have both the mains frequencyand the frame rate in synch, though they have a non-synch latitude upto4% where there may not be appreciable flicker.

Light PulseFrame RatePulse rate

1x 100 1002x 50 1003x 33.33 1004x 25 1005x 20 100:::100x 1 100Your question becomes relevant here, when the camera should be in PHASE withthe AC power. Like you said, it becomes important that the shutter opens at thesame time the peaking occurs in the AC cycle. It does become significant at whichpoint of the half wave the exposure starts. In my opinion, there is a small rider toit. I feel that the question of when the shutter should open vis-à-vis the AC cycleis more relevant when we are dealing with higher fps, irrespective of the shutterangle. For example, if we set the camera at 100fps in the above condition, we get only one pulse of light at 1/200

of a second to fall on the film plane. It is thenpertinent to have the opening of the shutter and the Ac cycle in perfect synch. Inthis case, if both of them are perfectly synched, then you may not see the imageyou are shooting on your viewfinder.What we had seen above is independent of the shutter angle. The other way toavoid a flicker is to choose the shutter angle along with the combination of framerate. Many cinematographic books and website recommend the followingcombos.

50% 48% 40% 33.33%

180172.8144120

50484033.33

1001/2

25242016.66

501/3

16.661613.3311.11

33.331/4

12.5012108.33

25 1/5

109.6086.66

What you should look at is the flexibility of the frame rates, theoretically.,Consider the columns mentioning the shutter angles. When the shutter angle is50% opened, ie 50% of 360, then the acceptable frame rates to avoid flickerwould be 50, 25, 16.66, 12.50 and 10 fps. These frames rates gets reduced at ½,1/3

, ¼th and 1/5

of 50 fps. It is the same for shutter angles 172.8 and 144and 120. What happens when we reduce the shutter angle is that it gets closed(like at 172.8 degrees, the area of the shutter that is opened is reduced by 2% ascompared to 180 degrees, at 144 -10%, at 120 around 16%) thereby increasingthe duty cycle of the shutter and to maintain the Hertz cycle, we correspondinglyreduce the frame rates so that pulse rate of the light is an integer multiple of theframe rate. What essentially happens is that with the combo of shutter angle andthe fps we restrict the hertz cycle of the shutter to one of the harmonics of theAlternating Current. In this case, it does not matter when the exposure cyclestarts, as all half sine waves are identical. As long as we adjust the shutter angleand the fps to capture one or more half cycles, we can avoid flicker.Now, whatever which was said above applies to the a magnetic ballast in a HMIlight. Nowadays we usually have Electronic Ballast. In an electronic ballast, the50 Hz is upped between 65 to 80 Hz so that it produces square waves instead of sine waves. When compared to the pulsation of the magnetic ballast, thepulsation of a electronic ballast will ‘appear’ continuous. It is also theoreticallypossible to connect 3 HMIs on each phase of a 3-phase AC current to produce apulsation of 360 half cycles in, so that there is no delay for a flicker to be felt orrecorded. There are also many studies conducted to study the flicker below 10fps.I should admit that I had not tried all of the above combinations when I was inthe Institute. In retrospect, I should have written a script for each of them andtried it.