Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

mscates176 · Joined: 10 Feb 2011 Posts: 77

I have a video shoot on monday, and I have less experience with video than photos. I use a panasonic camcorder and it records 1080 at 50 FPS. I normally export it at full hd 1080, 50FPS. The clips have been accepted before.

However, last time i set the shutter speed on the camcorder to 1/50. I was reading up about the 180 rule and it said that if you shoot at 50fps you should have the shutter at 1/100.

Could someone be kind enough to give me some help here. Should i set the shutter on 1/50 or 1/100?

sadeq68 · Joined: 01 Jan 2009 Posts: 274 Location: Sydney, Australia

I would say leave it as the default of 50...

willall · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2012 6:06 am

Yeah I think I have heard that before, something about setting it to double the frame-rate / field-rate. Not sure though, maybe test it and see how it effects each frame / field.

mscates176 · Joined: 10 Feb 2011 Posts: 77

Ill try some on 50 and some on 100

Thanks for responses

royster · Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 279 Location: England/Greece

As a general rule the shutter speed should be double the frames per second rate.
If you Google it there are lots of videos that explain it and show examples.
As usual rules are made to be broken

rinder99 · Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2012 10:11 am

johann · Joined: 14 Apr 2010 Posts: 29

It depends on the look you are after. Most feature films have used a 180 degree shutter (double the frame rate of 24fps = a shutter of 1/48)

Are you sure you are shooting frames per second and not fields per second? 50fps would be slow-motion PAL / SECAM, whereas 50 fields per second would be standard PAL / SECAM but instead of frames you have alternating fields of even vs odd lines. These are generally called 25p (progressive scan) vs 50i (interlaced) in most camera settings.

I would suspect that you're camera is defaulting to 50i so if you want a 180 shutter you should set it to 50. If possible set your camera to 25p so you get a de-interlaced look.

Using higher shutter speeds is more typical of video. For example it's use in sporting events (one of the reasons video was invented) allows for less motion blur on freeze frames. So it you wanted a more "staccato" feel then use a higher shutter and a smoother feel that we associate with feature films then use a 180 shutter.

Good luck.