Frame Rates, Shutter Speeds and Slow Motion

Discover how to alter the appearance of motion in your videos.

In this filmmaking class, you’ll learn all about frame rates and shutter speeds. Professional photographer and filmmaker Karl Taylor demonstrates how adjusting these settings alters the appearance of motion in your videos, and how you can use them to create awesome slow-motion and time-lapse footage.

This class includes some fun demonstrations, including fruit splashing into a drop tank, a model walking across the set, and Ping Pong balls bouncing on a hard surface! By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and inspiration you need to capture your own captivating footage.

In this class:

  • Filmmaking techniques made easy
  • Frame rates in filmmaking
  • Frames per second
  • Shutter speeds in filmmaking
  • How to create slow-motion and time-lapse videos

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. Felice

    Hi Karl
    I understand frame rates, shutter speed, slow motion and time laps.
    But I have a confusion with fps and playing the video with players on PC and Mac.
    The standard video players on PC and Mac play the files in the recorded fps.
    Recorded 120 fps played 120 fps. This means that camera pans are smooth and without jerking.

    Can you recommend a player for PC and Mac where the fps can be set during playback and which supports color profiles? My test videos look great on the PS timeline. Played in the player they look terrible in terms of color. Maybe I can also find more info in the classes?
    Thanks for the beginner lessons. I’ll see how far I can venture with movies.
    Felice

    1. Hi Felice, generally speaking everything played back on a device whether it is a computer, TV, tape, etc it will be playing back at 25fps for europe and in the USA they run on a 30fps playback. If something was recorded at 120fps then that is approximately 4x slow motion when played back or it is speeded up 4x so that it doesn’t look like 120fps slow-motion. All standard recording on video devices is filmed at 25fps or 30fps depending on whether Europe or US and then edited and played back at that speed, anything recorded at a fast fps is slow-motion that has to be speeded up when played back to not be slowmotion and as such frames are dropped/lost to be able to do this or all the frames are retained and then it is slow-motion. There are barely any instances where the playback device is faster than 30fps because there is no need for this as it is hard for the brain to perceive motion beyond that and the frame rate can look disturbing. There are instances where filmmakers deliberately film in 60fps and the playback is set to match to give a sort of sharper/jerkier feeling to the film but this is not common. There is also something else called the hertz rate of a screen that might be confusing which is the flicker/scan rate of the light on the screen often 50/60hz but this has nothing to do with play back frame rate per second that is just something pertinent to the display.

  2. One for Ben here if possible being a Sony expert…
    Will the Sony A7iii or A7Riii, autofocus during slow motion video? And what is the maximum frame rate it will AF at please.
    …. The reason I ask is being a Canon shooter the Mark IV will not AF at 100FPS so useless on a gimbal.
    I cannot find anywhere whether Sony A7iii or A7Riii will AF during slow motion at all its settings.
    Mmmm, can you help please?

  4. Gary Stasiuk

    So placing this into a light enhanced real world situation.. you are shooting 30 fps.. generally targeting 1/60th of a second exposures, and thus you are managing the exposure through light control.. let us assume ISO remains at an optimal. Is that generally the approach in the set up?

    1. Hi Gary, yes we are mostly managing through light control either via the light source or through ND filters or adjusting aperture or ISO but of course it would be better to keep the desired aperture and ISO but it’s not as critical, for example on the AS73 we like to work with either of the base ISOs of 640 or 12800 which if correctly exposed give the best dynamic range and minimal noise.

  6. What shutter speeds did you use for the various frame rates in the fruit dropping test, it would be good to know. Thanks.

    1. In the video we used 60fps – 1/120th, 120fps – 1/250th, 240fps – 1/400th and 400fps – 1/425th, (the 180 degree rule, except for the 400fps as that camera does not have the low light capabilities).

      With high frame rates/ slow motion its generally better to use a higher shutter speed as there is no need for motion blur like in normal speed video, the advantage of using higher frame rates for slow motion is the slow motion will look slightly sharper or crisper, however when filming in these higher frame rates light is an obvious issue so as long as your shutter speed is the same as or higher than your frame rate you will still get good slow motion.

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