View Full Version : gs400 shutter speed below 1/60


Leigh Wanstead
January 6th, 2005, 10:22 PM
Hello everyone,

I just read my gs400 manual and surprised to find that shutter speed can't be set as 1/30, 1/15 for video shooting. I thought that feature is quite important to simulate movie effect 1/24. Anyone found a solution to shoot using 1/30?

TIA
Leigh

Frank Granovski
January 6th, 2005, 11:25 PM
No such setting unless perhaps you leave the cam in auto and shoot in dim light or set the cam in its low light mode---if it even has this feature.

In the old days of miniDV many consumer cams had low shutter settings. These days it seems only Sony's 3-chip cams have them and maybe the GL2. Can't recall.

Bogdan Vaglarov
January 7th, 2005, 12:04 AM
Yeah, this is old pain of mine. If there were 1/30 shutter setting the GS100 (400) would be the perfect cams.

In low light mode (yes there is such mode) it will generally rise the gain to 12dB and somewhat brighten the image (compared to set 12dB gain in manual mode).
In Magic Pix mode the shutter is set to 1/8 but if there is more light I've caught it rising to up to 1/15 or even 1/30 (not sure for the second one) but you can't control this.

Andreas Winkler
January 7th, 2005, 05:07 AM
<<<-- Originally posted by Bogdan Vaglarov : Yeah, this is old pain of mine. If there were 1/30 shutter setting the GS100 (400) would be the perfect cams. -->>>

I fully agree with you, Bogdan! If there were a 1/30 setting in ProCinema mode, it probably wouldn't look so stuttering.

Bogdan Vaglarov
January 7th, 2005, 08:47 AM
Actually I didn't mean to combine the 1/30 shutter speed with the ProCinema mode.
If you want Cinema mode (pseudo in this case) anyway it should be slightly stuttering (trying to be closer to the film rate which is low 24fps).
So the shutter speed this 24fps are shot doesn't matter in my opinion.
What matters is if we had 1/30 setting we could eventually greatly improve and have much more flexibility in the lower light conditions.

I might be wrong on the film thing so please free to correct me.

Andreas Winkler
January 7th, 2005, 09:00 AM
Oh, I'm a different opinion. The shutter speed should be the full frame length to get more motion blur and a smoother look. I think the "cinema look" does not really come from these 24fps, much more from the full time capture and the different gamma curve. A 30fps video with the cine gamma and 1/30 shutter would much look like film I guess!
Of course you are right, that the low light capabilities should be better at 1/30 compared to 1/60. But this needs to be in combination with frame mode or progressive recording, because the interlaced fields require 1/60 for NTSC.

Leigh Wanstead
January 7th, 2005, 12:25 PM
<<<-- Originally posted by Frank Granovski : No such setting unless perhaps you leave the cam in auto and shoot in dim light or set the cam in its low light mode---if it even has this feature.

In the old days of miniDV many consumer cams had low shutter settings. These days it seems only Sony's 3-chip cams have them and maybe the GL2. Can't recall. -->>>

That is incorrect.

My jvc gy-dv5000 has shutter speed 1/7.5, 1/15, 1/30. The camera is a professional camera.

Frank Granovski
January 10th, 2005, 06:55 PM
Th JVC GY-DV5000 is a professional cam. I wrote, "In the old days of miniDV many consumer cams...." ;)

Joshua Provost
January 11th, 2005, 11:51 AM
FYI, the normal shutter speed of film is 1/48, not 1/24. The shutter is open for 1/48, closed for 1/48, open for 1/48, etc. While closed, the film advances. So, 1/60 is not terribly far from 1/48.

Frank Granovski
January 13th, 2005, 04:50 AM
The standard for NTSC (Broadcast/Television/cams) use 59.94 fields per second with a shutter speed matching that. :-))

Rokta Bija
January 15th, 2005, 02:58 AM
Film is shot at 24fps, but it is projected at different rates, 48fps, 72 fps, 96 fps depending on if it's a 2, 3, or 4 blade projector.