The big hype of high shutter speeds

[Chris Harding]

Hi Guys

At the moment I'm shooting without ND's and simply pushing the shutter speed.. I know this might ruin the look if you are creating a cinematic style movie but for standard run of the mill documentary work so far I see no issues at all. My older Panasonics in auto mode actually push shutter to 1/2000th in bright sun and I have never seen any problems.

Fair enough I do agree with stuff like running water the dreamy effect from a 1/50th shutter makes it look good a flow well due to the bit of motion blur whereas at 1/2000th you might get an almost freeze frame effect which you don't really want.

What other disadvantages are there to using a fast shutter as opposed to a stack of ND in the same bright conditions?

Enlighten me please ??

Chris

[Noa Put]

My cx730's also use the shutter to compensate for overexposure, when they trow rice when the couple exits the church you can see every rice grain in the image which I thought looked kinda cool :) but that might not be the effect others are after.

There is one thing however where I do see the negative effects and I"m not 100% sure if it's the high shutter but I have a feeling it is. When there is some very fine detail in the shot and I"m panning across it (it could be a green hedge with fine branches) that part of the image sometimes flickers a bit. I have tested between 25p and 50p which made no difference but did not try adding a nd filter to lower the shutter yet.

Since I never have this issue inside, only outside I think it's a result of the high shutter. But beside that I don"t see any negative effects with weddings at least.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Noa

Thanks for that...Where are you in Belgium? We have friends over for dinner and Fred was born in Antwerp so when I said Noa is in Belgium he was interested

Chris

[Noa Put]

I live in a town called "mol"

[Adrian Frearson]

Panning and camera movement can be distracting at times if filming in 24/25p, with a high shutter. I quite like a high shutter for some situations and if going to slow mo, then I find it really can help.

[Noa Put]

Panning and camera movement can be distracting at times if filming in 24/25p, with a high shutter

What does the high shutter cause in that situation?

[Rod Pike]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Guys

At the moment I'm shooting without ND's and simply pushing the shutter speed.. I know this might ruin the look if you are creating a cinematic style movie but for standard run of the mill documentary work so far I see no issues at all. My older Panasonics in auto mode actually push shutter to 1/2000th in bright sun and I have never seen any problems.

Fair enough I do agree with stuff like running water the dreamy effect from a 1/50th shutter makes it look good a flow well due to the bit of motion blur whereas at 1/2000th you might get an almost freeze frame effect which you don't really want.

What other disadvantages are there to using a fast shutter as opposed to a stack of ND in the same bright conditions?

Enlighten me please ??

Chris

Hi Chris,Well heres a sideways look at the issue:
if you are shooting at 50FPS and your shutter is running at 500thsec, you are not seeing 90% of what happened during that frame, So the 500th sec is stretched across a 50th sec, giving that staccato stuttery look, because you are only gathering 10% of what is happening.

In every frame, unless it is a still life, there will be a little movement. With a matching shutter to frame rate you capture the last of the movement in each frame which links smoothly in continuity with the next frame.giving a more fluid waxen and natural look (in my opinion of course!). At high shutter speeds there has to be great gaps of missing information.

[Chris Harding]

Thanks Rod

In actual practice shooting things like cutaways on the B-Cam doesn't cause an issue as people are sitting and watching a wedding ceremony...it's almost still life!! I had the situation on Saturday where the bridal party were in front of a gazebo in full shade, half the front row guests also had some shade but the back row and people standing were in full sun. Changing a fixed ND would have been close to impossible there due to time allocation and it would have been tricky even to change the ring on a variable ND so the easiest method to get my full sun 10 second cutaway was to spin the shutter to 1/400th and then back to 1/50th or 1/100th for the shady spots.

I do appreciate the point though...the only issue again with a variable ND is that you can never have it "off" like you have on your AC-160 so at best you are shooting with an ND2 filter which in deep shade might cause problems.

I'm still deciding whether something like an ND4 and an ND8 might be a better option than a variable ND (which cost a fortune for a good one) but I still have the issue where I'm shooting in bright sun one minute and then into shade the next.

Chris

[Adrian Frearson]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

What does the high shutter cause in that situation?

Rod has given a pretty good example above, but I would add that motion blur from the lower shutter speed helps smooth things out. Obviously, as the framerate increases, there are fewer skipped areas as the camera moves. I think it's a taste thing though. I quite like the jerky/stroby look from high shutter speeds in some fast action sequences.

[Ron Evans]

As Rod has stated the higher shutter speed will potentially introduce a judder similar to a 24p judder on a pan for example even though you may be shooting at 50 or 60P. Not much of a problem if there is no camera movement. My routine on my small Sony's is to use a variable ND, set so that the scene just starts to go dark on the display and then back off a little. Effectively putting the auto into managing exposure with gain. This is what I do all the time shooting when skiing. Since the little Sony's have a low noise picture anyway this works just fine for me. With the NXcam range there is the advantage of seeing what the camera is doing in the display something not possible on at least my little Sony's until I look at data code on playback.

Ron Evans

[Chris Harding]

Hi Ron

In a wedding run 'n gun situation actually getting to the ND ring to change it is my issue...our civil ceremonies last 15 minutes and I shoot cutaways for the first 5 minutes only (never over the legal part) so fiddling around getting a variable ND filter correct means getting your hand inside the lens hood to get to the ring to adjust it (you could also end up with a smudge on the glass too) .... That's no issue if the cam is on the tripod and not moving (nor light conditions changing) but on my 2nd cam I could be in and out of shadow and sun so rather using a fixed ND4 (to keep things more civil as a starter) and then adjusting shutter is a lot easier and quicker. Normally I let auto shutter do the job for me unless I feel it hasn't got it right (tends to keep shutter low and aperture high) and then it's easier to push the shutter button and lift the speed than have to fiddle inside the lens hood and "feel" for an ND ring.

Chris

[Chris Harding]

I was at my supplier today getting a new lens and the shop had a special on ND filters so instead of getting a variable which is going to be tough to adjust inside the hood, I settled on a three pack at 30% discount and got an ND 2, 4 and 8 which should help the camera in bright light... the ND8 pulls down the aperture to F5.6 at 100 even in really strong open sun like we have here...my next wedding is an outdoor one too so I'll check how they behave. I will do a few tests prior to the next wedding too though!!

Chris

[Ron Evans]

Yes I understand Chris, though when I go skiing I only set the ND once at the beginning of morning or afternoon session. The intent is to force the camera to use gain to manage exposure by bringing shutter speed down and opening the iris. By setting just back from the point where the image goes dark I know that the iris is wide open, shutter speed is as slow as possible and gain is also high. Backing off, the gain will come down and iris close a little long before shutter speed will increase. This gives the auto a range to play within for iris and gain. For the NXCam range you can see the settings all the time so could set iris and shutter speed and let the camera use gain to expose. You could set iris at 5.6 if you don't want to ramp when you zoom. With the fixed ND's you now have I expect it will be just a matter of choosing the correct one for the conditions and run as I have described. As Nao has mentioned it would be nice to have a control wheel for gain/iso. The VG30 does have this function being able to assign any of the functions to the control wheel. Typical Sony !!!
On the NX5U there is a smooth gain switch setting in the menus so that switching between the gain settings while shooting is smooth. I do not see this in the manual for the EA50.
Ron Evans