a7s iii and S-Cinetone Test Video

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Mark Rosenzweig

Ok, now we finally get a straight and now the correct answer rather than an unqualified "shutter speed way too high." .

Well, next time you post non-standard footage that requires special viewing conditions and/or hardware maybe you should state that in your description of the video. I notice that you couldn't be bothered to write ANY description whatsoever, so don't blame your viewers if they didn't jump through the correct hoops to view it in whatever fashion you are viewing it. I don't make it habit of checking the metadata of videos I watch to see what oddball settings may have been used. Next time I'll have some 3D glasses, a decoder ring, a tin foil hat, and orthopedic shoes standing by so I'm ready to watch anything you might post.

[Andrew Smith]

That's gotta be a niche audience right there. I'm old enough to remember when 3-D was the future.

Andrew

[Christopher Young]

Rules are rules. The old story is to fully understand the rules and know why they exist and how they affect what you are attempting to do. The same applies to film and video. The old rule of thumb for filmmakers was your shutter speed was double your frame rate. 24/48, 25/50. One of the reasons for this was because of the persistence of human vision. The image in your mind's eye would be decaying before you got another frame refresh at 1/24 or 1/25th of a second. The persistence of human vision is approximately 1/20th of a second. In other words, the image in your eye was fading before a new frame arrived 1/24th or 1/25th of a second later. Hence the image appeared to flicker... because the preceding image was decaying before a new image was projected.

That's why in the cinema with 24 frame projection each frame is exposed to the viewer at either 48 or 72 Hz a second, using dual or tri-blade rotary shutters. No, the film doesn't run faster it's still run at 24 fps but you are just flashed each frame two or three times by a rotary shutter before the projector gates and pulls the next frame down during a shutter blanking period. With two or three frame exposures the image is refreshed in your mind before it has started to fade. This result is a natural smooth looking projection image.

Once we had the ability to shoot at 50 and 60p the old double the shutter speed for a refresh to overcome the persistence of human vision became unnecessary. Once you understand all of this then by all means break the rules for artistic reasons. Generally, though it's best to understand the rules before you break them to fully understand the results you will be getting.

Something I have done for over forty years is shooting every kind of sport you can imagine. GP racing car and motorcycle, team sports, football, cricket, baseball, air racing a la Red Bull aircraft racing. Powerboat and hydroplane racing. All shot at 1/50 or 1/60 unless for slo-mo when it will be shot at multiples of 50 or 60. In other words 100th for 50, 120 for 60 or 200 for 50, and 240 for 60. Shooting sports for TV for real-time motion and transmission we shoot 50th second in 50Hz countries and 60th second in 60Hz countries as this gives you the most natural-looking motion with regards to both temporal and spatial resolution and inter-frame motion blur. These frame and shutter speed factors need to be adhered to for the delivery of natural-looking motion to match the physiology of the human eye. If you want to slow motion down in post then yes use 100th, 200th or 120th, 240th of a second for smooth natural-looking movement at 50% or 25% speed.

As I say break the rules but know what effect you are delivering. Sorry, but IMHO shooting 60p at 125th of a second for normal speed motion playback gives you a shutter angle of 173 degrees that is neither here nor there in delivering a natural cadence with a pleasing temporal and spatial resolution and motion blur. Have a look at the examples on this page. Specifically, the last video which is shot at 59.94 at 125th of a second. It's far from a natural look.

https://wipster.io/blog-for-creative...e-shutter-rule

As I said, sure break the rules but understand what is happening to your vision. A good little experiment was run by Gerald Undone that takes you through various combinations of shutter speed/angle vs frame rates. Everyone has their own opinion and you know what they are like. Just that, opinions. But most people know what looks natural. Decide for yourself.

Chris Young

Motion Blur, Shutter Speed, & 180° Shutter Angle // TESTING the RULES! - YouTube

[Andrew Smith]

On a side note, so many people yearn for shooting in 24fps as part of achieving the 'filmic' thing. Being in PAL land and always filming in 25fps I'm like "what, really?" as I'm barely going to be able to tell the difference of one frame per second.

Just thought I would mention that.

Andrew

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

Sorry, but IMHO shooting 60p at 125th of a second for normal speed motion playback gives you a shutter angle of 173 degrees that is neither here nor there

Not that it makes any difference to your points, but the tootage that was posted is even stranger than that. If you look at the screen shot from Catalyst Browse the shutter speed is actually 168.5° and 1/128th.

[Christopher Young]

No I didn't check, it was enough for me to feel it didn't have the correct cadence to me for normal speed movement. It's old information but there are plenty of calculators out there to guide users as to what shutter angles or speeds to use for the natural looking motion.

Cadence:
What is motion cadence?
The degree of temporal smoothness is defined by the term "motion cadence." High quality motion cadence would have no visible juddering or strobing in the image. The typical rule for creating smooth motion cadence in a video is to double the frame rate to find the optimal shutter speed.

https://super8arena.com/shutter_speed.php

As I said breaking rules have consequences but are the results of those consequences what you desire when you break the guideline of double your shutter speed relative to frame rate for 24/25/30 FPS. But as I said for normal motion cadence this is not necessary when shooting at 50/60 FPS.

As you said DJ it's a free world. Shoot whatever frames, angles and speeds you like but don't be surprised if someone questions the results of your choice. Kaminski broke those guidelines when shooting Saving Private Ryan and they worked in that context. Worked well in fact.

Chris Young

Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach - Art of The Scene - YouTube

[Doug Jensen]

I'm just wrapping up production of my 7-hour FX6 master class and I reference "Saving Private Ryan" and "Gladiator" as good examples of breaking the conventional shutter speed rule as a creative choice.

What bugs me, though, is when people choose a fast shutter speed for exposure reasons. That's what ND filters are for. Keep your shutter speed in check, and use ND to keep the exposure down Cranking up the shutter for exposure is not a creative decision, it is just laziness or comes from ignorance. I'm not saying exposure considerations had anything to do with the OP's shutter speed choice, I'm just throwing that in as an aside as part of a bigger conversation.

[John McCully]

[QUOTE=What bugs me, though, is when people choose a fast shutter speed for exposure reasons. That's what ND filters are for. Keep your shutter speed in check, and use ND to keep the exposure down Cranking up the shutter for exposure is not a creative decision, it is just laziness or comes from ignorance. [/QUOTE]

OK Doug, when it comes to cranking up the shutter which I not infrequently do in my humble opinion I’m being neither lazy nor ignorant. Let me explain by recounting a small segment of yesterday’s outing. Bright and early off I went to one of my favourite shooting locations. As I was setting up my tripod a friend came by and told me I just missed a large white heron. He said it took off and headed in the direction of the nearby estuary. White herons are only very occasionally found here. When they do show up they don’t stay long and are restless, flighty and to even get anything, photographs or video, one needs to be quick on the draw.

So off I go around to the estuary. There it was. I hauled out my tripod, plonked on top my Lumix G9 with my somewhat new Leica 100-400 lens attached, opened out the screen and set things up.

Now, as usual there was an overabundance of light, a clear bright sunny morning. I have the camera set to shoot 4k 60p, creative movie mode. I set f5.6 at 2000th shutter (underexposed to prevent blowing out the whites) and let ‘er roll. Then a couple of photographs and the big white heron visitor was off and away up the creek where I could not follow.

I did not come home empty handed.

With this discussion about shutter speed in the back of my mind I then did some experimenting, nothing scientifically valid mind you but interesting none the less.

A family of resident Paradise Ducks, indifferent to my presence, mucked about in the estuary and made great subject matter. I doug (pun intended) out my ND filters and shot video and photographs at various settings.

Back home I viewed the files on a Dell 4k monitor (P2715Q). Overall quite lovely. On close examination the white heron was not healthy and showed the signs of being way off course and far away from home.

If I was just lazy and/or ignorant I would have stayed at home sitting on my butt watching Gerald Overdone waving his hands and his rotating ruler concluding, as I did, it makes little difference. Based on my shooting and viewing circumstances I shall continue to leave the ND filters in the back of my gear bag.

Let me emphasize I am never ever shooting narrative drama nor soap operas (often not that different) and never view my output on a TV nor publish on YouTube. My Internet connection while adequate for uploading text is dismal when it comes to video.

There you go, for what it’s worth. Not lazy nor ignorant, in my humble opinion.

Cheers…

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by John McCully

OK Doug, when it comes to cranking up the shutter which I not infrequently do in my humble opinion I’m being neither lazy nor ignorant.

Were you shooting video or stills? For stills the shutter speed doesn't matter and 1/2000th would be just fine. But if you were shooting video, there's no way that video looks good unless the bird wasn't moving a feather. Ignorant or lazy? not my call, but one or the other certainly applies. :-)

Also . . .
1) You shouldn't need to underexpose to prevent blowing out the whites.
2) You should have already had the ND filters onboard the camera as soon as you stepped out of the car. It was daylight, right? You gotta be prepared because there won't be time to fart around with filters and settings when an opportunity suddenly presents itself -- as you have just proven with your own story.
3) 1/2000th is 4-stops over 1/120th. How could you be caught off guard by that much?

I shoot a ton of birds and wildlife and not ONCE have I ever exceeded the proper shutter speed range. never. There's no excuse for it.

BTW, both of these were shot with my Lumix S1H:

Panasonic Lumix S1H Demo Footage Part 2 - Gators & Birds in 4K on Vimeo

Panasonic Lumix S1H Demo Footage Part 1 - Birds in Flight on Vimeo

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by John McCully

... when it comes to cranking up the shutter which I not infrequently do in my humble opinion I’m being neither lazy nor ignorant.

Nobody I think is saying what you are doing is incorrect in the context of what you are shooting given your example. Wildlife often benefits from over cranking and various shutter speeds to emphasize certain aspects of movement especially for slow-motion replay. I started my time with the BBC in Bristol. Home of the Natural History Film Unit where fast frame rates and often very fast shutter speeds were used to emphasize various aspects of animal movement. Still for the bulk of normal speed filming the 180-degree rule was observed as it kept normal speed action looking natural, correct in fact. Trying to represent animal movement correctly is important from a research and scientific POV. Even when shooting very high frame rates in the majority of situations the 180 rule was followed. 500 FPS would be 1000th of a second.

But that is not the context of this discussion. This discussion originated on the normal speed action that was presented by the original OP which was shot at a frame rate that, to be honest, didn't look natural.

As Pond 5, one of the largest wildlife footage libraries suggests on their basic tips page.

"The camera settings are incredibly important to the type of shot you want to get, so if you’re going for cinematic footage, open your aperture as much as you can to shrink your depth of field and really emphasize your subject. Remember the basic 180 rule and double your frame rate for the shutter speed to give some nice motion blur, which adds a natural look to the footage. You can lower the shutter speed to experiment with more blur, and raise it if you’re filming a fast moving object like a hummingbird or an animal running to give it a more jittery and energetic look. The same goes for frame rate. For fast-moving action, increase your frame rate to get some beautiful slow motion footage."

High-speed frame rates are where the magic lies. But as I said that even with high FPS the 180 rule still applies if you want natural-looking movement. Generally, when shooting birds we used to look for a shutter speed that worked best for the bird's wing speed movement when slowed down and that then would determine the best frame rate. Different birds benefitted from different shutter speeds. A gliding hawk worked fine on the basic 180 rule. Fast darting and turning swallows called for a different shutter speed. Hummingbirds were a different story as you needed a shutter speed that when slowed down didn't give you a multiple still strobe look. It was a lot of experimentation to get a good natural-looking shot. Far different from shooting people walking around or sitting having a coffee where IMHO the age old 180 rule for natural-looking movement still applies when shooting at 24/25/30 FPS.

The fastest shutter speeds I've used in a normal video sense not using hi-speed cameras was when shooting ESS missile tests during joint US and Australian Navy exercises off Hawaii. 10,000 of a second worked well for that. No hard and fast rules but guidelines are there to help you.

In the final analysis, it's up to you to deliver what looks good and representative of what the human eye sees so it's the shooter's call.

Below are two frames at 1/10,000 of a second plus one from right under a missile. The purpose of this shoot was for analysis so high-speed shutter and frame rates were the order of the day.

Chris Young

[John McCully]

This is an interesting discussion. Thanks for your comments Chris and please allow me to respond. The very first response to the OP included these words “And the shutter speeds seems way too fast. Just my opinion.” The OP responded “But your comment on shutter speed is way off.”

Perhaps I missed something - I was under the impression that shutter speed was front and central to the thread.

Let me clarify a couple of points. I shoot both photographs and video hence my choice of the Lumix G9 which does both quite well, in my opinion. Please understand I do this for fun and not for profit. When I was informed by my friend about the white heron I was taking photographs and when I arrived at the estuary and, to my delight, spied the white heron the camera was in point-and-shoot photograph mode i.e. stabilizer on, auto-focus on and the dial set at ‘Intelligent Auto” which is a reliable point-and-shoot setting, on the Lumix G9, in my opinion.

I do NOT seek to capture so-called cinematic footage and I detest slo mo with a passion. The super shallow DoF inducing FF gear that is all the rage I shy away from and suggest it is a marketing ploy to improve the camera/lens profit picture that continues to go from bad to much worse. Just my opinion.

My less than perfect scientific test are just that; less than perfect but indicative nonetheless. (I was a scientist prior to retirement so I know about scientific testing. The amount of BS out there posing as, presented as, ‘scientific’ is mind-boggling, also in my opinion.)

I keep a highly skeptical mind to the forefront and always on the tip of my tongue is the question “HOW do you know?” (and not how do YOU know). In other words what are the assumptions you are basing your input on and whence did they come?

I am highly allergic to silly false dichotomies an example being, I must be either “Ignorant or lazy? not my call, but one or the other certainly applies.” A classic false dichotomy.

Thank you again for your comments regarding camera settings. Most helpful generally and good to be reminded of those points.

In summary the context of this thread for me was very clearly about shutter speed. My limited tests indicated I could quickly crank up the shutter speed shooting the kind of subject matter I was shooting without the sky falling in. I was out for a non-profit fun morning shooting wildlife, both photographs and video. I came home with some nice footage and photographs notwithstanding the all-to-brief encounter with the somewhat bedraggled shy visiting white heron.

I broke the shutter speed rule. Dear oh dear; how terrible. Much ado about bugger all, I reckon. And here’s another Shakespearean (without the NZ ending) quote that seems somewhat apt “methinks thou (not you Chris) dost protest too much”.

All the above offered in good spirit, lighthearted and not-for-profit!

Cheers...

[Doug Jensen]

John, I hope that you would agree that DVinfo is generally geared towards the needs of professionals in the video/television/media production industry. And I think it can be assumed that most people who post here are either professionals or advanced amateurs who are looking to share ideas, learn new information, get answers to questions, and improve their skills. That's what a forum like this is all about.

But you don't want to learn. You want to do it YOUR way and then tell us it doesn't matter if YOUR way flies in the face of professional standards and techniques. That is a lame argument no matter what subject is being discussed. The old "that's the way I like it and it doesn't matter what others think" is the last bastion of people who really don't have any other arguments left to justify their actions.

"I am never ever shooting narrative drama nor soap operas"
"never view my output on a TV nor publish on YouTube."
"My Internet connection is dismal."
"I do this for fun and not for profit."
"A reliable point-and-shoot setting".
"I do NOT seek to capture so-called cinematic footage"
" I was out for a non-profit fun morning shooting wildlife"
"I broke the shutter speed rule. Dear oh dear; how terrible."
"good spirit, lighthearted and not-for-profit!"

What does any of that have to do with setting the correct shutter speed? Nothing. Those are just excuses or an attempt poo poo important settings and shooting techniques that you don't want to learn or use yourself.

Your whole attitude is that you can do whatever you want and it doesn't matter because you are shooting video solely for your own pleasure. And there is nothing wrong with that -- for you. But many of us are professionals in the business who's work must meet certain standards and stay within conventional norms if our work is to be accepted by clients, employers, and customers. In my opinion, that is what this forum is about. And when someone just wants to say "none of it matters because I'm not a professional and I don't show my video to anyone else" that is counterproductive to the overall discussion and serves no purpose whatsoever. These things that you don't care about do matter to professionals. There are right and wrong settings in this industry, whether you want to believe it or not.

You asked . . . ""what are the assumptions you are basing your input on and whence did they come?"

My comments come from 40 years of experience shooting high-end television and video production -- while making a very good living at it. That is where my advice comes from. And doing a professional job is why these things matter deeply to many of us even if you just want to throw your hands in the air and say it doesn't matter to you. Even though you don't classify yourself as a professional, why not try to up your game and do the best job you possibly can? I think that you might like the challenge and the sense of accomplishment it brings when you start getting footage that really is good enough to be accepted commercially -- even if you are the only one who sees it.

[John McCully]

Thanks Doug, yes, a better post, somewhat toned down, more professional with minimal personal attacks. Good. Keep moving in that direction and in no time at all you will become an agreeable, pleasant forumite! I look forward to that.

A couple of points:

I do understand DVINFO is more or less a meeting place of working professionals - but not exclusively - which I have long since ceased to be. But that is no excuse for a holier-than-thou attitude that your posts often reek of. You are a ‘teacher’ and not a bad one methinks based on being a pupil of yours many years ago. However as you pointed out above you are now of the ‘older generation’ as am I, and we must strive to ward off the tendency to become grumpy old men especially in your case a grumpy old know-it-all male teacher.

I remind you that while I am not a professional as such I am still a customer of yours and perhaps you might try learning what that means and how by learning about the subject you might keep up with the changing challenging post-pandemic business world. My guess is that things might get somewhat more difficult in the near to medium term.
[
“Customer focus is the ability to consistently build long-term relationships based on the delivery of a service, product or value. Plainly said, customers define value. A successful leader has a deep understanding of the customer’s needs. The essence of customer focus is building a relationship with your customers that they would like to continue.”

Regarding learning and your suggestion that I might ‘up my game…’ you need to understand that continuous improvement, constant learning, experimentation, are second nature to me. Contrary to your assertion I don’t throw my hands in the air and say it doesn't matter to me (colourful rhetoric but wrong, wrong, wrong)…continuous improvement and believing there is always, and I really mean always, room for improvement is totally my thing. I thought I made that clear. The standards you alluded to, all well and good, were my point of departure.

Regarding a sense of accomplishment: I am not lacking when it comes to a sense of accomplishment - more is always good - which in my case goes with ongoing experimentation and learning. Unlike you I am not constrained by outdated standards and modes of operating. You might call me an ‘artist’ not beholding to the ‘union’ rules. That would work for me and help make you a ‘customer focused’ better person - a worthy goal for sure.

Cheers.

[Doug Jensen]

John, I'm happy to have a spirited debate about shutter speed and professional shooting techniques for as long as anyone wants to go round and round, but now you are making it about me, my attitude, my way of doing business, etc.

I was wrong when said that saying "that's the way I like it and it doesn't matter what others think" is the last bastion of people who really don't have any other arguments left to justify their actions. You have reminded me that there is an even lower form of comment when people have run out of arguments -- attack the other guy personally. It would be a waste of my time to continue this conversation, but just for the record, I stand behind everything I have posted on this thread.

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by John McCully

Perhaps I missed something - I was under the impression that shutter speed was front and central to the thread.

You are correct John. I should have said shutter speed when I said the frame rate looked incorrect. My boo, boo! Brain fade on my part no doubt :)

Keep on shooting and enjoy.

Chris Young