Can I up the FPS when I’m shooting for slomo?

[Colin Mcquillan]

Do you mean shutter speed? If so it depends on the look you are after. I prefer to shoot sports slomo with a higher shutter speed – but also at times will go the other way if I’m after a more dreamy fluid look.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

“Live, love, laugh and be happy.”

[Chris Barnes]

Yes, sorry I’m not sure why I typed that. haha

I don’t want any crazy effects, I just want a really clear slomo shot with dirt flying etc… If upping the shutter speed is ok in this situation, how much is a good start? 200, 400, 1000? I want the footage to flow without any image blur or distortion. I edit in vegas movie studio HD platinum 10.0 Thanks

[Steve Crow]

If you are going to be filming for a slow motion effect, I would shoot at the 1280×720 60 frames per second mode and then look for a shutter speed closest to 1/120th of a second. After that – don’t touch the shutter speed! (you can play around with it later!)

Start there…you will see the slow motion effect when you bring the footage in a timeline that is set up for 30 or 24 frames per second. There’s plenty of info on the Web about this technique – start with the basic formula I’ve just given you and then you can make adjustments from there – it might be a good idea to do some test shots before your big event of some fast moving objects – even if it is just cars along the highway or skateboarders.

[Colin Mcquillan]

[Steve Crow] “.you will see the slow motion effect when you bring the footage in a timeline that is set up for 30 or 24 frames per second”

Not necessarily. With a program like FCP 7 you need to process the footage first (transcode to an i-frame codec and conform to 29.97 or 23.976 with cinema tools) otherwise when adding the raw footage to a regular frame rate timeline FCP will effectively throw away half of your frames and do a blend of the remaining and your slomo will look like a**.

There is different process with FCPX. Not sure how premiere or avid handles this but do your homework or you wont be getting the most out of your footage.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

“Live, love, laugh and be happy.”

[Brent Dunn]

60 fps at 720p is the best you can do in these cameras. It will give you a little smoother slowmo, but not the amazing slomo of a high speed camera. You can cheat and use a software called Twixter to get some nice smooth slowmo, but it has a learning curve.

Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.net

Sony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut Studio

HP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite

[Gary Huff]

Shooting a higher shutter than 1/120 won’t help much with the slow motion.

[Chris Barnes]

Thanks for all your feedback. This forum is and has been very helpful with my learning curve.

[Colin Mcquillan]

[Gary Huff] “Shooting a higher shutter than 1/120 won’t help much with the slow motion”

I would disagree. To slow down fast action for crisp slomo – heading north of 120 can be a good idea. I often do so for stylized shots I put together for sports show opens It all depends on what you are shooting and the look you are after. Do you want motion blur? if yes shoot at 120 or 60 – or lower even if thats you flavor.. If not and you are after sharp slomo then experiment with shooting up around 1000.

Here’s an example of the type of looks you can pull from fast shutter @ 720p60 – further slowed with twixtor.
https://vimeo.com/13557939

Do camera tests and figure out the look you are after before you shot…

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

“Live, love, laugh and be happy.”

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Vimeo framework” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.