School me on shooting in 24fps while flying

[John Cash]

I always shoot in 30 or 60 Fps using a GH3. I was recently asked to shoot in 24 fps . Although I did bump up the shutter speed to what I thought was ok the footage came out with a lot of what I call motion blur. This was following a car driving down the road from the side view. The subject was clear but as it passed trees and other cars the image broke down

I don't have the footage.

I can fly and keep bumping up the shutter speed but I. Would like to ask you guys

GH3. Olympus 20 mm f2.0.
ISO 200
Shooting in daylight /late afternoon

I used f11/125 @ 24fps. Looks like crap

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by John Cash

I always shoot in 30 or 60 Fps using a GH3. I was recently asked to shoot in 24 fps . Although I did bump up the shutter speed to what I thought was ok the footage came out with a lot of what I call motion blur. This was following a car driving down the road from the side view. The subject was clear but as it passed trees and other cars the image broke down.

Well, yeah, it would. It's because the camera is moving too fast. Same reason you have to pan/tilt slowly when on a tripod. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a thing.

[Zach Love]

What was your shutter? 1/125? That's not too fast, but most movies are shot with a shutter of 1/48, I usually shoot at 1/24 when doing 24fps (which gives this kinda mix between video & 24p film look but is forgiving with motion).

Do you have any ND? Many lenses don't perform well when you close them down. f/11 isn't

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Zach Love

I usually shoot at 1/24 when doing 24fps

That would give even more motion blur.... as you say the default would be 1/48.

Originally Posted by Zach Love

Do you have any ND? Many lenses don't perform well when you close them down. f/11 isn't

Do you mean open them up? ND filters allow you to open up the aperture...

[John Cash]

This is why I started this discussion. It's a spot where the professional videographer will want to stick with the shutter angle. Or double the Framerate. That won't work. 1/24 and 1/48 are way too slow and will look really bad.
As Bruce stated it's much like a fast pan except the subject is focused and clear but motion blur with everything else. I went with 1/125 and even that was to slow.

I know from years of gluing what won't work. I. Just have a hard time getting the 24p guys to understand this isn't shooting from a tripod. It's action.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Just curios, this isn't what you asked, but first I never supply my clients with the footage right out of the camera. They have to wait for me to post process it. I got tired of complaints about some of the aerial footage I was supplying only to discover that they just cranked up the warp stabilization and it looked like crap. A lot of editors don't know how nor do they want to have to post process aerial footage.

Depending on the scene, if there was no sync issues with live action dialog, which I rarely have, and there's fast motion within the scene I'll often shoot 30fps, encode it (in my case) to ProRes and use CinemaTools to convert the frame rate to 24. The 8% slowdown is not so much that it complicates the editors life but is enough to smooth out the shot and make the motion blur not so objectionable. Also how you make the frame rate conversion is important. CinemaTools doesn't render or re-encode the footage, it just changes the file header from the original frame rate to the target frame rate so that it plays at that rate. If you just place a 30FPS clip into a 24fps timeline and then just render it there's all kind of frame blending and motion interpolation that can really make motion blur look crappy depending on your preferences.

When I started doing this I got a lot of push back but I just kept asking the producers and directors what problem where they really trying to solve by forcing me to shoot 24fps. After demonstrating the difference so that they understood why I wanted to do it that way more than 90% of them said OK as long as they got a 24fps clip. I still get the occasional director who insists on 24fps, "its so much more cinematic" and just thinks I'm an idiot.

[Wayne Mann]

We shoot 24P a lot and we always use 1/50 on DSLRs or the GH4 as it defaults to that and won't give you 1/48. Shooting in 24P with a 180 shutter while tracking a moving subject requires a really well behaving three axis brushless gimbal, a really good camera operator and smooth flying to take as much stress off of the camera operator as possible.

A 20mm lens is a tough lens to track with on a 2x crop. It would be a lot easier with a 12-14mm lens. The closer your subject is the less you want it moving from one side of your frame to the other as it will cause major studder depending on how fast it is moving across the screen.

After a ton of blood sweat and tears I have my GH4 Alexmos 32 bit mount to a point where the footage never needs stabilizing and that is a point you need to get really close to in order to be able to shoot 24P with a 180 shutter. I will be posting some new reels in the next few weeks that have a lot of tracking shots done in 24P.


Wayne Mann
HeliCam Aerial Media Services, Aerial Video, Aerial Photography