Photographing under LED Stage lighting: tips and experience.

Hi team,

Canon R8 using EF lenses with adaptor.

Hoping others can chip in here for future redditors to learn from and experienced ppl to contribute.

I have been doing paid stage performance photography for many years and nowadays venues have fully converted to LED stage lighting.

I shoot from about 15m back from stage with a zoom lens as that produces the perspective I am after rather than the up the nose perspective from closer up at the stage lol.

This poses a problem called flicker banding or rolling shutter banding which results in light or dark bands appearing across the performance area unless the camera is carefully set up.

The stage lighting can vary significantly both in global lighting level down to a single spotlight on a performer.

So what I currently do is:
Anti-flicker Shoot = ON
HF Anti-flicker Shoot = ON (Auto Detect where possible)
Shoot in AV
ISO Speed Setting = floating 400-6400
Tracking Sensitivity = +1

The first three I feel are most important in combatting the LED banding effect, however HF Anti-flicker Shoot can severely limit my shutter speed. HF Anti-flicker Shoot doesn't work effectively under TV mode iirc. At calibration it will fix shutter speed to a specific fixed rate (440.9, 115.7 etv) and needs to be fixed at that speed or banding may or will occur. I imagine the camera is calibrating the light to be at the amplitude of the LED emission (the brightest point).

The floating ISO and Metering exposes shots such that one burst may be significantly darker than the next burst and this creates additional work for me in Lightroom to adjust. I'm hoping for more stable results. Ideas?

Questions come to mind:
- as to whether I can calculate out a faster shutter speed.
- what Metering mode would you recommend for dark background and often brightly lit subjects?