Recommended Shutter Speed for Landscape

[Kyle McConaghy]

Hello! It is a bright and sunny day, and I am going to shoot some footage of downtown buildings, hotels, etc. I'll probably use some time lapse footage.

What would be a recommended shutter speed for 1080 30p? I want nice sharp images and normal looking motion.

Thanks so much!

[Garrett Low]

1/60th

That would be the norm.

Garrett

[Olof Ekbergh]

I always use angle and set it to 180.

This is 1/60 for 30P, 1/48 for 24P etc. This way I don't have to change it unless I want to. It gives you a good "normal" look most of the time.

[Kyle McConaghy]

Thanks for the replies! Would their be any advantage of doing 1/120 for slow motion or to achieve extra-sharpness?

[Olof Ekbergh]

Kyle, if you go with faster shutter speed picture will start to strobe, Private Ryan style. For stills this may be preferable but not for video. For a normal look that is.

But this is pretty subjective. Try it you may like it. There are no absolutes, just common practices.

[Kent Beeson]

Olof, what advantage if any is there to using shutter angle? I've not really understood that option as opposed to speed...I too usually use 1/24 for 24p, and 1/60 for 30p, not tried yet angle.

thanks

[Olof Ekbergh]

Angle is just another way of figuring shutter.

It is left over from film camera days.

A standard shutter wheel, the wheel that spins full time in a film camera, 1 revolution per frame, is a 180 degree wheel it is open half the time, 1/48th of a second for standard 24 fps.

A 90 degree shutter wheel is open for 1/96 sec at 24 fps.

The degree is how much of the wheel is open (or missing).

So a 360 degree shutter, impossible with a film camera, film has to advance and stop then get exposed and advance another frame, would be 1/24 of a second for 24 fps.

Here is a good link that explains it:
Movie camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Leonard Levy]

Kyle, The thing to be careful of is not to let your f stop close past 6.7 on the EX or else you will get soft due to diffraction. On a sunny day that may require a bit more shutter or add an extra ND.

[Andrew Stone]

Agree with Leonard's take. Some people may not be factoring in that the original poster is going to be shooting in bright light.

Being sunny I would start with some parameters. Using ND1 is a good place to start. Your shutter is probably going to be north of 1/180, if your lens is in bright light even with ND1 invoked. So...get your white balance and quickly dialing through your shutter speeds with your aperture around F4 as a starting point. Depending on your depth of field requirements adjust your iris between 5.6 and 2.8, then adjust your shutter speed so your histogram is giving you good spectral balance based on your subject matter. Something like that. If you are doing slomo it will affect your light requirements but you will see it in the viewfinder once you setup the camera to overcrank.

[Olof Ekbergh]

I guess this discussion has expanded.

I use ND2 almost always outside in the sun. I try to shoot at f4. Seems to be the best.

f2.8 to f5.6 is very good.

At f1.9 the corners are not sharp, but this can be an advantage.

For landscape I like to use a circular polarizer and ND's to get f4. I have lots of different ND's both round and 4x4's for my mattebox.

I also really like graduated ND filters, to make the sky or whatever the right exposure.

If I get real picky I use my mattebox with a whole bunch of sunset and other filters. I can go on and on.

I was just trying to give a simple answer, about shutter speed. I don't like to change from the 180 degree setting to fix exposure.

But this is all very subjective, try different filters and settings to find what you like.

[Steve Nelson]

I would second the idea of adding another ND. I just did a similar shoot earlier this week, downtown city timelapse and slo-mo shots. I did mine in 24p but the extra ND filter was crucial in giving me flexibility as the sun moved throughout the day. Midday I could keep the camera between 4-5 f-stop and go between ND1 and ND2 depending upon the shot composition (bright concrete or buildings vs. darker colors or shadowy shots).

As far as shutter goes, I used the standard 180 for everything. For the timelapse I shot 1080/24p at 1/48, for the slo-mo I overcranked to 60 frames in 720/24p and set the shutter to 1/120 which is 180 for the 60 frames. Both of these ended up looking great, very smooth and no strobing.

[Kyle McConaghy]

Thanks for all the feedback! It was a big help!