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60D Smooth Slow Motion
My shutter speed is set to 1000, and I have the camera set to 720p/60fps…
I have been told numerous times to do this, if i want to achieve the smooth slow mo look with twixtor…
My only problem is that I have to lower the aperture enough to get barely enough light into the camera, and it’s still too dark – I raised the ISO to 6400.. It’s still too dark..
From my understanding, I figure that you have to have a high shutter speed and 60fps set to capture enough images to be able to pull them back to create that smooth slow motion..
The only problem is not getting enough light… I’m also assuming the aperture is synonymous to iris? but if it isn’t i know i would be able to open the iris more, to get more light..
Someone please help me.
Thank you for your time.
Fernando
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5 Replies
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Your only options for getting more light are:
1. Raising ISO to the highest numbers
2. Decreasing the shutter speed – slower than 1/1000
3. Filming with a wide open aperture (fstop) – the smallest number
4. Adding light to the scene artificially – either using physical lights or reflectors
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
If you want smooth slow motion choosing a shutter speed of 1/1000th is wrong, here’s why.
Your camera is shooting at 60fps and on normal replay will show you 60fps, changing the shutter speed does not change this.
If you set a shutter speed of 1/1000th it will show you 60 frames per second each captured at 1/1000th sec.
This means that a lot of action will happen in the other 999/1000ths of a 60th of a second between the frames that is not recorded. (ie you’re missing 99.9% of the action). This causes a strobe like jump in the action as it moves in time from one, extremely sharp frame (if viewed as a freeze frame), to the next frame and when viewed in real time that appears more exaggerated as you slow the replay speed down.Shoot at a shutter speed of 1/120th to no more than 1/400th then re-conform your footage to 1/30th or 1/24th before bringing it into your NLE. If you are using Final Cut Studio you can do this with Cinama Tools. (I have no experience doing this with other NLE’s but I’m sure something like After Effects would do it.)
A bit of motion blur will help your images “blend” smoothly from one frame to the next.
The only real way to shoot smooth slow motion is with a camera capable of shooting faster fps, but these tend to be rather expensive.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://philming.com.au
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Ok! that makes complete, total sense now…
When you say “re-conform your footage to 1/30th or 1/24th,” do you mean do that within the camera or FCP (like the sequence settings)?
Also, just to get your opinion: what do consider better, 30 fps or 24fps when i re-conform the footage?
I’m assuming Cinama Tools is a plug-in like Twixtor, that can do a “blend,” like you say.
Thank you very much for your time, it was very helpful.
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Cinema Tools is an app in Final Cut Studio Suite separate from Final Cut Pro, you need to use it prior to bringing files into FCP. It also permanently changes the frame rate on your original file so you may want to duplicate first. Twixtor is another program altogether that used properly looks excellent creating slow motion by making inter frames.
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://philming.com.au
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
[Phil Balsdon] “If you want smooth slow motion choosing a shutter speed of 1/1000th is wrong (…) “This causes a strobe like jump in the action as it moves in time from one, extremely sharp frame (if viewed as a freeze frame) (…) A bit of motion blur will help your images “blend” smoothly from one frame to the next. “
Sorry, to disagree in parts, Phil!
1/1000th is quite high, I agree. But I wouldn’t say it’s *wrong* per se. It is apparently too high for the shooting conditions, hence the too dark picture.
When just re-conforming to a slower framerate you’ll get a strobing (unusable) clip because of the lack of motion blur, just as you wrote.
*But*, when using plugins like Twixtor or the Pixel-Motion technology of After Effects to create slowmotion in post, the less motion blur you have, the better results you’ll get. Motion blur will most definitly create weird artifacts when using those plugins.
Depending on the motion you’re about to capture and the lighting conditions a shutterspeed of 400-600 should give you quite usable results. For some motion you’ll get away with slower speeds, for others you need higher shutterspeeds to get proper results.
We did a lot of slowmotion videos and I have to agree 100% that *real* slomotion can be only achieved with highspeed cameras. We once had a Typhoon HD5 that recorded with 500fps in HD (it’s capable of up to 1000fps if I remember correctly), which was quite impressive. No way you can get those results with a common DSLR or camcorder.
Just my two cents.
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