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What setting to shoot a marathon race ?progressive or interlaced
I shoot with a canon HV20.I am going to shoot a marathon race. My HV20 will be on a tripod.The racers are going to run from the left to the right. they will fill the screen. upon forecast weather it should be a bright little sunny morning. I generally shoot progressive and cinemode but I am afraid to get a stutter image as the racers run fast .50i will sure smooth the movement but I will lose in sharpness.
First question : progressive or Interlaced ?
Second question: in anycase what camera shutter do you suggest ? -
7 Replies
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It largely depends on what you are going to do with the footage. What’s its intended usage? What are you going to do with it? Is this part of a bigger project? If so, what are the specs for the rest of the project’s footage? All that good stuff…
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Think of my work as a picture:
I will shoot one hour of marathon without moving my camera.
Then I will grade my movie; plain color, no fancy stuff
no editing.
Then the movie will play , endlessly, from a mediaplayer ( 1080p HDMI )
on a 23″ lcd screen ( samsung f2380 to be precise).that’s all !
I just want a clean picture.
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Yikes, it’s hard to say, then. It just depends on what look you are going for.
The “cine” mode (which is progressive) will definitely give you a more filmic look… but it might indeed be a bit stuttery. Anytime you shoot at 24fps (no matter what the camera) fast-moving horizontal action (or fast camera moves) are going to give you that effect. You see it it feature films every day… we’ve just come to expect and accept it.
Shooting interlaced, on the other hand….yes, will give you much “smoother” motion. But the footage will definitely have a very live instant “video” look much different from the cine mode.
Again, I’d say that choice just depends on what aesthetics you prefer for this particular project.
As for shutter speeds, a “normal” shutter speed you can think of as half of your frame rate. I.e., if you’re shooting 24p then a “normal” frame rate is 1/48th of a second. If you are shooting 60i (which is 30fps), then “normal” is 1/60th of a second. Slower shutter speeds than that will start to introduce noticeable motion blur. Shorter shutter speeds than that will result in very crisp images that will look great as stills, but will look very choppy and stuttery in motion. So, faster shutter speeds are usually ill-advised unless you are purposely going for the “Gladiator” or “Saving Private Ryan” narrow-shutter look.
One concern though would be that you say you are shooting on a bright sunny day. One of the HV20’s downfalls is that it has no manual mode (unless you know the various ways to trick it). And one of the camera’s favorite things to do is to jack up the shutter speed to prevent overexposure. You’ll want to watch closely to make sure that doesn’t happen, unless that’s the effect you want.
If this is a one-of-a-kind event and you have one chance to get it right, I’d definitely run some tests first. Set up in your real location under the same conditions and grab a couple of friends and have them run through the frame at appropriate marathon speeds using various camera settings and see what looks good to you.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I like bread and butter and jelly …
would it be possible to shoot high speed then to smooth through some kind of after effects filter only the part of the movie which have a big difference of position between two frames ( like the feet or the legs )
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I suppose you could do that to a degree…but probably not well.
If you think about it, when runners move horizontally through a frame it’s not their feet and legs that give the most constant fast motion… it’s their bodies. The bodies are continuously moving at a constant speed through the frame. Their legs and feet are taking steps, which is of a variable speed… not constant like the body.
So, yes, you could shoot with a higher shutter and then put a motion-blur filter on portions of your footage to simulate the real motion of a more “normal” shutter… BUT, you have to think about this: with real motion blur with a static camera, the motion blur affects only the moving part of your frame, not the static parts such as the background. Just applying a motion blur to your footage would affect everything not only the parts you want to affect but the parts you don’t want to affect as well. That is, unless you want to do tons of painful hand-rotoscoping of zillions of frames.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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your right,
that’s why I am looking to smooth only the moving part ; the difference between two frames ? I wonder -
Here are two sports shoots I did with the Sony EX-1, 30P, 60.
I thought about shooting 30i, but stuck to 30P. It is hard to see everything online, but overall, I was happy with it. The BMX Racing is really fast moving, so it was more challenging with camera whipping. I also had some overexposure since I had a camera shooting directly to the starting gate into the sun.
I would never use a film rate 24P for sports.
Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Video.com
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