Waching daily Dec 7 2018

- Hey guys.

My name is Matt Johnson and today I'm gonna be explaining

shutter speed for video to you as quickly as possible.

What is shutter speed?

Well, to understand what shutter speed is,

first we need to talk about what is video.

Video is actually just a series of still images,

also known as frames.

And these frames are all put together

and played back very quickly,

so to your eyes they look like motion.

In the case of this video,

my camera is recording at 24 frames per second.

So, 24 still images per second are being recorded

and played back to you and it looks like I'm moving.

Now that we know that video is just still images

played back together, we can talk about shutter speed.

Two words, you notice: shutter and speed.

Digital video cameras use something called

an electronic shutter that opens and closes

to let light onto each frame of your video.

The shutter speed is how long

that electronic shutter is open

and each of those 24 frames are being exposed to light

before the camera moves on to the next frame.

In your camera, your shutter speed

is measured by fractions of a second,

1/25th of a second, 1/30th of a second, 1/50th of a second.

The lower your shutter speed, the brighter things will look

because you are letting more light into each frame.

You're probably thinking: okay, that's great Matt,

I want things to be bright in my videos,

so I'll keep my shutter speed low, awesome.

Well, hold on.

There is one other thing that you need to keep in mind.

The lower that you set your shutter speed,

not only will things get brighter,

but you will also introduce

more motion blur into each frame of your video

because the electronic shutter is being held open longer.

If your shutter speed is set to 1/25 of a second

for a 24 frames per second video,

then you're gonna see a lot of motion blur

when things move in your video.

Alternatively, if your shutter speed is set much higher,

to 1/200th of a second,

your image is gonna have basically no motion blur

and be much darker.

Keeping all that in mind,

the general guidelines that most filmmakers follow

is to keep their shutter speed at double their frame rate

which results in a nice mix of motion blur and sharpness.

So, if you were shooting at 24 frames per second,

then I recommend setting

your shutter speed to 1/50th of a second.

Matt, isn't 24 times two 48?

Shouldn't I be selecting 1/48th of a second?

Well, unfortunately, most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras

only let you select 1/50th of a second, not 1/48th,

but I wouldn't worry about this, it is close enough.

Two more things and then we're done.

First, when I am shooting at higher frame rates,

such as 60 frames per second,

I try to shoot with my shutter speed at 1/125th of a second,

which is roughly double 60 frames per second,

but because there is so little motion blur

at this high of a shutter speed,

your video is not gonna look any different

if you shoot at an even higher shutter speed.

When I'm filming outdoors at 60 frames per second or higher

in the bright Texas sun,

1/125th shutter speed may still result

in too bright of a video,

so I'll turn up my shutter speed to 1/500th or 1/1000th

or higher, whatever I need to set it to

so my video is properly exposed.

What about lower frame rates,

like 24 or 30 frames per second, Matt?

How do I keep my video from being overexposed

while still keeping my shutter speed

at double my frame rate?

Well, in that case,

I would recommend investing in a good variable ND filter.

I have a review of a variable ND filter adapter

that I've made that I'll link to up in the corner

and down in the description,

as well as some variable ND filters

that I recommend also linked down in the description.

Very last thing about shutter speed,

and this is a rule that you're gonna wanna follow

unless you really want to mess up your footage.

Never lower your shutter speed lower than your frame rate.

If you're shooting at 24 frames per second,

don't drop your shutter speed below 1/25th of a second

to 1/20th or 1/10th, etc.

If you do this,

you're essentially going to break your footage

and introduce all kinds of weird motion blur

that as far as I know

isn't really fixable without re-shooting.

And that's shutter speed.

Please let me know down in the comments

what you think about this no fluff,

camera basics as quickly as possible type of video.

I also have another video that I made all about frame rate,

so if you wanna check that out,

I'll link it to it up in the corner

and down in the description.

I am planning on making more videos like this in the future

so I would appreciate it if you want to subscribe.

Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.