Shooting 60p Varicam vs 60i HDCAM for slow motion

[Richard Ladkani]

Just for your information

The Sony Camera you mention does not record in Slowmotion. It can only do 24p in 1080×1920
The Varicam can record slowmotion (60p) but the resolution is not as good as it is 720p and not 1080p like the sony.

If you have the budget I would rent a 35mm camera for your slowmotion stuff. Then you can record in 120-150p (or frames per second) and it will look really great. 60p from the Varicam is not really that slow. It’s only about half the speed of real life and half the resolution of real HD like the Sony Cine Alta.
Hope that helped.
Richard

http://www.richardladkani.com

[Daniel Italy]

Thanks Richard,
Unfortunately there is no way I can afford 35mm for even just the slowmotion stuff. I remember reading somewhere on a forum that if you shoot 60i on the F900 you can treat it in post to achieve a SIMILAR (slightly worse) quality slow motion as the varicam at 60p. When blown up to 35mm it supposedly projects nicely… do you know anything about this? (50% speed slowmotion is all I require for this film)

[Steve Wargo]

Set your F-900 to record at 59.94 and play it back at 23.98. A rental house will do this test for you. Unlike the Panasonic product line, you don’t have to pull the footage into an NLE and remove frames. Many sony decks also have dynamic tracking for slo-mo. Hey guys, we’ve been playing slo motion video for decades. What’s the big problem here?

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona

It’s a dry heat!

[Michael Brennan]

[richard ladkani] “It can only do 24p in 1080×1920”

f900 can do 30p too.

Mike Brennan

[Michael Brennan]

For a small amount of slomo most f900 users shoot 59 or 60 and deinterlace either by NLE or real time hardware.

Varicam is a little sharper than deinterlaced HDCAM. A deinterlaced SR recording from f900 should be closer.

Dont attempt a offline before you have slowed the footage down and have rock solid timecodes.

The other option now available is 1920×1080 pixel 60p recorded 10bit using HDC1500 and seperate SRW1.

Mike Brennan

[Daniel Italy]

Thank you everyone for your advice. Will research the SR recording option with the local renting houses.
Daniel

[Timothy Duncan]

The F900R can record variable from 4 to 60fps. (It has over and undercranking, as well as interval recording and slow shutter).

Also, the XDCAM HD F350 can record from 4 to 60fps, and can play it back at the “native” frame rate you are set to. For example, you can setup for 24P recording, then overcrank to 60fps. The XDCAM plays back the footage at 24P giving you playback right in the camera or deck at 40% (in this example). So, you can instantly check your shots in the field. In a recent project, we shot quite a bit at 48fps and 60fps. The footage looked awesome, and I was able to enhance the effect with additional DMC in post. No need to “de-interlace”. One thing to note: You cannot ramp frame rates during recording with this camera. You can only set the frame rate per shot.

td