Why there is water ripple on the LED screen when you take a photo?

Before we answer this question, we have to know how the LED screen work.

There is a driving method for the LED screen. We use IC to drive the LED to light up. For example each IC has 16 legs(There are 16 legs, 24 legs, 32 legs...IC), each leg drive one LED, so each 16 legs IC drive 16pcs LEDs. This is static scanning, such as P16. There is no water ripple.

But P16 has too big pixel pitch, and because the LED industry develop fast and cost of the LED screen goes down, and higher demand of higher resolution LED screen by customer, the pixel pitch is getting smaller. The smaller pixel pitch means that more LED lamp and more IC needed for the screen. However, the size of LED can be very small, but the size of IC can not be very small and there is no such big space on PCB to install IC. So each IC have to drive more LED, for the same 16 legs IC has to drive 32pcs LED, we call it 1/2 scanning. If the same IC drive 64pcs LED, we call it 1/4 scanning, so there are static, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32...scanning method. 

So each IC drive more LEDs than the legs it has for most of the LED screen. So that means not all the LEDs will be lighted up at the same time. This is the point. A 16 legs IC drive each group of 16pcs LEDs each time, group by group, again and again. But how fast is the time? According to the refresh rate. 3840Hz has higher speed than 1920Hz. If the shutter speed of the camera is too fast, like 1/3200 second, there is no enough time for the IC to drive the LED, so there might be the water ripple happen on the photo you take. However, our eyes have visual residue or let's say our mind can not read the data so quick, that's why we can not see the water ripple with our eyes but we can see it from the photo.

Finally, here is the 3 tips for you to take a photo of LED screen: 1. Change your position to adjust the angle to reduce water ripple. 2.Lower your camera shutter speed, try 1/60 - 1/20 second. 3. Produce a higher refresh rate LED screen, please contact Tentech.