How Important is Shutter Angle When Shooting Slo-Mo? 

One thing that you didn’t mention is the timeline you put the clips on. There’s some stuttering which could be caused by the frames being dropped at odd rates. And if your looking for natural looking blur without stutter you have to slow footage down at a rate that is devisable by your timeline frame rate. So for 120p it’s 5th’s. 80%/60%/40%/20% or 4/5,3/5,2/5,1/5. Slowing down 120p at 25% is cramming 30 frames in a 24 frame timeline so it’s dropping out 6 frames and causing flickering or skipping etc. that’s far more distracting than unnatural blur.

Excellent video my dude! This comparison is exactly what I was looking for. You mentioned at one point that you were getting more motion blur with 60fps @ 180° shutter than you were at 120fps at the same shutter angle, and you were unsure why that was. The reason behind this is the shutter angle is just a relative term -- in other words, a way to change the shutter speed based on the frame rate. At 60fps @ 180°, the shutter speed is 1/120s. At 120fps @ 180°, the shutter speed is 1/240s. The faster shutter speed (1/240s) due to the higher frame rate (120fps) is responsible for the decreased motion blur you see. You can easily make the motion blur match between the 60fps and 120fps footage by setting the 60fps footage's shutter angle to 90° which would be 1/240s. The only downside is the jerky movements that would create due to the motion in the frames being sharper and more spaced out... unless that's your stylistic intention. Or, you could set the 120fps footage to 360°, which would be 1/120s shutter speed. The speed of your subjects, in combination with the underlying 1/120s shutter speed in your 120fps @ 360° footage is why the footage still looked acceptable, even with such a high shutter angle, and why the 60fps @ 360° (1/60s shutter speed) looked somewhat unpleasant. You have some latitude with shutter angle, but not much, and the degree to which you can crank your shutter angle really depends on how fast your camera/subjects are moving.

That's an interesting video, I've head similar assumptions. My basics are from photography, I've been always skeptical about blind faith in 180* shutter angle. But, my friend, how disappointed I am to see that you've headed to wrong test environment). As you noted, the whole point is, how blurry is each individual frame. And while we are all used to the blur and speed perception (more blur = more speed) of 180* at 24 fps look, in slo-mo we get to the point where we have NO motion blur at all. Normally acting humans would be perfectly sharp each frame both in 1/240s (180* of 120 fps) AND (Mostly) 1/120. So I actually think that 360 shutter for 120 will return some hint of motion blur to look good combined with normal 24 fps 1/48s footage. But that unless you shoot fast moving objects *LIKE CARS PASSING BY* So this makes very interested test completely irrelevant for me. Lazy bone now has to do it himself)

Interesting video. I would have loved to see you use the 90° Angle too for this test!

Can you repeat the same test with higher shutter speeds? Basically a comparison for people wanting to shoot on wide open apertures in bright light outside without an ND filter. Curious to see what you find.

Hi. How can 720° angle be even possible? 360° means that a frame is exposed all the time it has until the next frame hits. My camera even can't be set more than 360. Do I miss something here? Cheers 😉

Found your channel at random. I like your delivery of content. Clear and easy to understand, even to this tinnitus affected 63 year old. Because of the tinnitus it is hard to know if my audio is good or not even though it seems fine to me. No channel yet but was thinking about it. -- I decided to sub. : )

This is a good comparison for low light acquisition. However, if you go the other direction and over-crank your shutter speed you’ll notice much more fluid slow motion at greatly reduced playback speeds.

The video was nice, thank you for that.However I would like to mention that even though we SHOULD follow 180° degree rule, it is nothing covered by the law that we should obey at every time. It is how you said: 180° degree rule makes things more natural, that is correct. But what if I want to make thinks surrealistic, unnatural? This is where 360° degree rule would come to play in one example. Let's make a scene, where the car is moving too fast, but we cannot risk our lives, so we cannot drive like maniacs. The more the motion/speed, the more the motion blur, right? So let's safely make 360° shot, where the actor drives normally, still making an exaggerated motion blur and then make it 50% faster in the editing program. As a result, the motion blur is still there, as we shot it and we just made a fast moving car, safely. We have just made a "visual effect"! The next thing would be green/blue screen. Long story short: keying out blurry green/blue screen is pain in the ass and it gives horribly looking artifacts. Fast shutter speed eliminates motion blur and we can key out the footage nicely. Then we can add motion blur digitally, so we can return the natural look into our shot. This is how I do my filmmaking and I am satisfied with my methods. Tell me you thoughts on this. Do you think that I have made nice filmmaking hacks? Tell me in the comments. Do you think that I am a stupid asshole, who cannot consider himself a professional filmmaker? Tell me in the comments...

Was really hoping you were going to show a higher shutter speed, i.e sunny outdoor situation shooting slow mo when you're at 1/2000 or something

So what if am using 120 fps should I keep my shutter at 180 OR 360 ? Am using blackmagic 6k pro

a photo of moving subjects shot i 1/30 seconds, will be more blurry than shot in 1/120. a high speed camera will freeze movement in every frame, so it wont be blur, because of high shutter speed, i.e 1/1000. doesnt have anything with 180-degree shutter angle rule to do, maybe?

blue comes from shutter, not fps and is the same on every imagr

Interesting thought exercise and real world test. The results show that a quality VND without crosshatching is a videographers best friend. ISO settings are a crutch and a bad habit to get into. Adjusting ISO should really only be done in photography to fine tune exposure in between stops.

Interesting and well performed. Thanks a lot. But what about shutter angle when you are pannning fast moving subjects? Could be another great video. ;-)

Thanks, that was very helpful. One issue I have is when shooting slow motion with very fast action, at either 60 or 120 fps, 180 degree rule (1/120 shutter speed or 1/240 shutter speed) has too much motion blur, here is an example of mine: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UZ2g_47wtPc.html . I think I need to go even faster with my shutter speed.

You cant go longer than 360... 60fps with 1/30s gives you 30fps with 1/30s...

Cars are fast moving subjects. This is an intriguing test. I'll do one with slow moving subjects. I've seen some videographers shoot at ridiculous shutter speeds and show great results. It'll be interesting.

i don't get how the shutter works as you go over the 360 degrees angle. So if i get well when you use 360 degrees the shutter stays open as long as the tatal duration of the frame. What happens when you get beyond this 360 angle? Does the shutter stay open on the next frame? So basically it never closes for the whole second.

Great video but wished he went lower than 180°

Shutter angle is useless term in the digital world. No matter how many FPS you shoot, just choose a shutter speed that matches the amount of motion blur you want.

Basic hand movement will have motion blur with 180°.

So in summary, What's the best angle of 60p?

I added all my thoughts and opinions on YtTalk, I hope that helps. I was very into photography when I was in college, I'm actually still interested in it now, but I don't still have a camera to use because somebody stole it. I might get back into it someday, and your vids would be very helpful.

Why not show 90 degrees

The 360 degree rule at 120fps actually looks fine, But yeah, for slow mo and 24/30fps, use the 180 degree rule or the closest. But i do think that HFR playing back at HFR looks better at 360. 60fps be 1/60, 48fps be 1/48 and like that, Since that will give it natural motion blur and not look weird

What if you have a bit tio weak ned when shooting 120fps can you speed up the shutter ?

For 50fps how much shutter speed should have??

This is what I recommend with videos. Always Shuttle Speed double the frame rate. ALWAYS use ND filters to control light. Avoid raising at all cost ISO. Filming in slow motion, at any higher frame rate then 30fps. Use After Effect Motion Slow Motion - Pixel to create the missing frames, this way you will get a SUPER smooth playback without the strobes that looks like missing frames are there. Always remember this! Light or Luminance are controlled by the Aperture and Shuttle Speed. ISO destroys the image quality because it is a GAIN, meaning that is will change frequency of the image after it had being capture by the sensor. Just like audio, you will not make your sound better with a GAIN, just louder, same with the ISO. Understanding how to control and use the Aperture on any cameras from film or digital, you control the image 100%. The benefit of digital over film is that you can play with the ISO and film you can't cause it already has being burned. So, when filming with digital cameras, think like a film camera and you will always get the best video quality and playback. (Mirrorless does not has a shuttle angle) it just turns the capture of the sensor on and off. Manning that a film camera or DSLR will have a better film like video because of the moving parts and not a on and off thing. Yes, when you make slow motion, ALWAY use AE motion slow motion plugin to create the missing frames, does not matter if you us high frames of not.

if you record a high speed video (240fps) with 180° shutter and play it back slowed down (24fps) it loks natural but if played back at normal speed (240fps) it looks stuttery

I think 360 shutter angle could make sense in a few areas such as slow mo footage ramping down. Lets say you're recording in 30 FPS 1/60 (180) for normal speed but then you want ramp to that speed you could record at 60 FPS 1/60 (360). But that something I conjured in my head. Let me know if it does or doesn't make sense.

Interesting, I came here because I am wondering if I can get away with shooting 50p at 1/50 for Real Estate work on a slider and/or gimbal to squeeze a bit more light out. I reckon the slider will be no problem but I am going to do some tests with the gimbal tomorrow, hopefully as long as there are no fast pans it will be okay.

Very interesting video, you made some good points here. Especially mentioning that the speed of the moving object also affects things and that the relation between fps and shutterspeed is important. If a car moves with 50mph and we record at 120fps 1/250s and we record the same 50mph car at 24fps 1/50s you will end up having way more motion blur in the 24fps video (Referring to a 24fps timeline). In order to have the same amount of motion blur in the 24fps video, the car would need to move with only 10mph (or 5 times slower). This makes a lot of sense, because thats the same way our eyes/brain functions. In nature a slow car will appear to have much less motion blur than a fast car. To argue which shutterspeed for slow motion is best to achieve the "most natural" look is not possible in my opinion, because we naturally can't see in slow motion. I see it like this: In 120fps (or 5x) slow motion a 50mph car appears to move at 10 mph when played back in a 24fps timeline, so 1) If we want our "true vision" slowed down -> we will need to reduce shutterspeed , this will give us more of a feel that the car is actually faster 2) If we want to have a result as close to the result we would get if we would record a car with 10mph at normal playback speed -> we need to follow the 180 degree shutter rule Might be a good or a bad thing, but in the end it comes down to which effect you want to achieve.

Brilliant...thanks a lot

Thanks for Your Work, but I think there is something wrong in the overall understanding. Or maybe I am not right... What I mean is, that in terms of motion blur, shutter speed should be the only thing that effects the picture. If you shoot at 25 fps with 1/1000 shutter, then your frame is without any motion blur. Than it gets more if you set it to like normal 180 degree. 1/50 for example. What I am trying to say is, that if you play your 120 fps video with 1/120 shutter speed in real time there should still be less motion blur in each picture than if you record in 30 frames and 1/60 shutter speed. The only reason why you want even less shutter speed in your slow motion is because you dont want motion blur in a slow motion. If nothing is moving fast in the picture it is not natural for the human eye if it has motion blur on it. So If recording on 60fps and also playback at 60fps I would say 1/60 shutter is the most natural looking picture.

360 degree and 720 degree aren't necessarily "useless"; they're just a different look. For example, if I was shooting a scene showing someone on drugs then the motion blur of a 360 degree shutter angle could be perfect to achieve that effect. Conversely, if I was shooting a scene of a violent fight or a car chase then 90 degrees could look cool. Try to just think of shutter speed as another tool in your toolbox to tell a visually compelling story. As a rule of thumb, 180 degrees is best. But not always.

i have a device that can only capture 24,30,60,120 fps. shooting in a PAL country, is it OK to use shoot using 30 and 60fps and using shutter speeds that are multiples of 1/50 (1/100, 1/200)?

this is a very important video!! thank you for explaining in depth with visuals.

fuck yes i was looking fort this info everywhere... couldnt find shit, you earned a real subscriber my man! Thank you.

I think your test is fine, variable speed on the cars just mimics real life. Our subjects aren't guaranteed to be moving at the same pace at all times, so the variety gives a better idea for what to expect, a range. I think the reason your 720 shutter angle made the footage so choppy is because you instructed the camera to halve your framerate. It's like saying there's 1 frame per second, camera: expose it for 2 seconds. It's impossible.

Thanks for sharing.

Perfectly explained. Thank you.

What about going the other way with a 135* or 90* shutter angle at 60fps and slowed down to 40%?

Great video! I was actually thinking about the same question yesterday :) Thanks for the info!

Very good video

Good analysis -- very informative.

I feel like you should've done this test on more things than just cars. like maybe filming something that is still and seeing how it effects that.

So what do I do if I record a video at 120 fps but plan to slow it down further to 240 fps?

Bro I am going to buy an action camera ...there is an option of 90● or 180● ...so which will i buy??

How much FPS and shutter speed should be kept for slow motion in the red dragon

Such a great video!!

Very useful video! From my perspective I still see a bit jittery the image when shooting at 60fps | 180 shutter angle (4:30) . I rather to get a bit more of blur instead of jittery images. But this is obviously my thought and criteria

Thank u man amazing vid

Awesome vid...

4:17 was so satisfying to watch

Thank you for this video! Helps a lot

Very helpful! Thanks for sharing bro! I'm just thinking... maybe a footage of Fireworks or night cityscape (both in a tripod) could be interesting using 360 degrees. What you think? Kind regards

EXCELLENT! I do have the same questions as the person prior to me. Can we do this test with higher shutter speeds? Shorter shutter angles? examepl same question as 'Cellar Door' thankyou again for all of this it's great

Which one best shutter speed and more information

Well done. Thank you.

Great illustration of the different results. Cheers.

Nicely done showing the various shutter angles. Lots of work put into this.

Well described. You made so much sense and I have done my own little tests as well and agree with you on the 180 rule. And good point on Hollywood can always manipulate lighting.

Super helpful, thanks so much for making this

Very helpful

You are bright, articulate and informative. Thank you 🙏

How do u record 720 degrees shutter angle? The look can work well for certain things.

The first concise test I have seen on the subject.

Thanks for putting together this video Channel 8 !

That was really helpful, Thanks so much 🙏

Nice job. I had the same questions.

Great informative video! Helped a lot, thank you 😊

Very good side-by-side comparisons. Final takeaway: stay away from 360 degree shutter (if there is motion), unless all other options have been eliminated. It is a tail-tell sign of a budget video. 2) 360 degree shutter induces compound motion blur. Literally, a nauseating experience.

"The image is acceptable" -- (lol it looks bad)

in movie change fps for slowmotion ??????

Great analysis. Simple and to the point!

Is that the Trinity playing fields, in Manning in the background?

Thanks!) Good info)

Thanks man!

you can't shoot at shutter speed "exceeding" your framerate. Your "jerky" 60fps 1/30 footage is effectively just 30 fps

Great video, well presented.. subscribed :D

These are quite interesting results. Most people testing HFR for 3D and VFX purposes tend to open up the shutter angle to REDUCE motion blur, so I’m unsure as to why you would be getting worse results using 360 degree shutter versus 180. Maybe a conform/codec issue. I’d try to redo this using the highest quality codec your camera can shoot just to make sure something else isn’t going on.

why do u say angles instead of just saying what the shutter speed is? angles dont have anything to do with shutter speed.

If i shoot 120 fps slo mo what is my right shutter speed? 1/240 or 1/120

the guys rapping in the song are ruining your narrative.

Your video editor seems to have skipped frames. That's why the slowed-down clips appear jerky.

No one event care....

360 angle is how the eye sees the world. you can just wave your hand quickly and check it yourself. I feel comfortable and natural seeing 360 degree angle. it is the fps that is the problem. 30fps is a little bit low, still. to make the point clear, you can imagine 5fps 360 angle shutter. 5frame per second and each frame is capturing all the data, so it would be very blurry. 60fps 360 degree shutter angle should be fine.