Explain shutter speed usage please

[morisato]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone can explain to me how to use the shutter, or rather, how YOU use the shutter setting.

Before you answer, I'd like you to know that I fully understand what a shutter is and how it works, so a lesson on shutter speed is not necessary. What I would like to know is how people go about using the shutter speed setting in their situation. What situation would you change your shutter speed?

While I fully understand the details of shutter speed, I still don't give it much thought as to what shutter speed to use. I usually set it to a standard 1/60th unless a few things happen that make me have to change it. The problems being,

1. I need more light and my iris is wide
2. I see flicker in the lighting
3. I need to syncro scan

Other than those techinical reasons, I don't understand in what setting/environment one would change their shutter speed. The only aesthetic reason I can see for changing the shutter speed is to get that choppy war film look, but that's a rare/specialty look that you wouldn't normally use.

So how do you use your shutter?

[4mat]

This recent thread shows a good use for high shutter http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=105778
A background in photography will help you undrstand when and where to use certain shutter speeds. Sometimes it's artistic and others times it's the only way to achive the shot.
If the yoyo in the clip http://www.electriccowtheater.com/YOYO/YO.movwas shot on a slow shutter it would almost certainly be blurry and hard to see.
The more experiance you gain the better you will find this out.
-matt

[FilmBoy77]

i was going to ask this same question soon. so let me get this straight also, the faster the shutter speed the more light you need?

also, i read the post where justyn said he set his shutter speed at the highest for that yoyo shot, but i thought setting it at the highest gives you that choppy war film/saving private ryan look?

[4mat]

The yoyo was shot overcranked and thus gets around looking choppy due to the higher frame rate. Normaly you would be correct unless whatever your shooting isn't moving around the screen much.
Yes more light is needed the higher the shutter as the light has less time to make an image in camera.
Some basic photography books will cover all this as the principles are the same.

[morisato]

My question is still unanswered. Though appreciative of 4mat's intention to help, I already knew all that, and stated that I did in my original post.

EDIT:

Just to restate my question, the shutter is a pretty basic tool and an easy concept to understand. It opens, captures light, then closes. The faster it does this, the less changes in light (blur) you see, but also, the less total light you capture (image gets darker). My question is if there is anything else to the shutter? Can it be used in ways other then the basic way? I feel that the shutter is so basic that you can't really use it in an aesthetic way on normal circumstances. Shooting fast action and don't want it to blur? Use a higher speed. Need to maximize light? Slow down that shutter. Lights and TV flickering? Syncronize that shutter. What else can you do with it other than the obvious?

[John Froton]

The practical thing to consider, when it comes to shutter speed, is that it increases and decreases motion blur. Just think of it as exposure time. A slow shutter speed (longer exposure time) allows for more time (thus more movement) to take place in the exposed frame. A faster shutter speed decreases blur by limiting the time that movement is exposed in the camera.

The confusing thing is trying to discern what is affected by shutter speed and what is affected by frame rate and the difference between the two. Shutter speed can be faster than the framerate, and this translates as the exposure time becoming only a fraction of the time that the frame is being recorded

For example ... think of taking a still 35mm SLR picture with an exposure time of 5 seconds. If you take a 5 second picture of someone walking by the camera, you will have a constant streaking pattern of that moving image going across that picture. If you cover the lens during the last three seconds while taking the 5 second picture, your streaking pattern will will be reduced and limited by the amount of exposure time. It is literally chopping away motion blur.

Shooting at framerates where movement becomes smooth without being choppy, the shutter speed can either eliminate that motion blur (streaking image) or increase the motion blur by spreading it out over multiple frames.

The framerate affects the temporal feel of video. However, the framerate does not directly create the motion blur so much as it does accomodate the motion blur that the shutter speed can provide in each frame.

To answer the question of what else can you do with shutter speed and why else would it be used? .... Beyond using it as a way to control exposure levels, it really only becomes significant when there is movement and it is really a tool to be used to set a level of motion blur that is sought after.

Most of it is aesthetic, and so really a matter of personal taste. Freeze on a frame of Bruce Lee hitting Ohara in Enter the Dragon and you will see a blurred ghost of an arm. Some action films have used a high shutter speed look that would give a less ghosted appearance on a freeze frame like that but really makes the scene look more "hypernatural" than natural.

If you wanted to get that choppy "war film" look then you would be better off by reducing the frame rate than you would be by reducing the shutter speed.

Framerate is more related to choppiness and shutter speed is more related to blur.

For me, a fairly typical shutter speed to go with for most purposes is double the framerate, meaning the exposure time is half (50%) of the recording time. If I want a little more blur to try and subtly smooth out some choppiness in a 24p pan, I can slow the shutter speed down a tad (shutter angle 190 or 200 = shutter speed closer to 44 than 48 in a 24p setting). However, this can lead quickly to adding too much blur for me so I may opt to pan more slowly or quickly and keep the shutter angle at 180 (shutter speed 48).

EDIT - Here's a good link describing the aesthetic effects of shutter speed (angle)
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=98691

[morisato]

So basically... yeah... it is what it is and nothing more to it.

[someday]

Different shutter speed change the look of a footage.
Normal shutter speed (1/60th NTSC or 1/50th PAL) makes normal body movements blury. hands, foots, become blury when they move. I don't like always this effect.
I prefere the shutter at 1/100th because it gives the movie a sharper look. But if you are following a fast moving subject, standard shutter is preferable because the moving background will be all bluried giving a better motion sensation.
When i have to shoot acrobatic or sport events, i prefere a high shutter, above 1/500th because a slow motion will let me see details that would be totally bluried.
And finally 2 technical reasons to use different shutter: Chroma key needs higher shutter to avoid bluried contours. 35mm adapters with moving GG will show their grain up if you set the shutter to high.