S-W Shutter Speed?

[Brendan H. Banks]

Hey everyone,

Waiting on an S-W of my own and have an interesting project coming through the pipeline for later this year. Coming up with some concepts on alternate ways to cover more traditional content and was curious to know about shutter angles and speeds possible on the S-W. I'm looking to achieve a long-shutter look and incorporate as much motion blur as possible. A sample effect would be like taking long exposures of a stream to create a foggy, flowing effect (kinda like this). I'd imagine that the best I could do would be going to a shutter equal to the framerate (essentially a 360) and choosing my framerate based on what works best in that scenario. Is it even possible to have something larger than a 360degree shutter angle? I feel almost as though it's a silly question but certain digital advancements have made the impossible now possible so I thought I'd at least ask. It's definitely a funky concept and the lack of manual framerate controls on my current camera make testing impossible.

If this has been covered somewhere or I missed a piece of documentation, feel free to point me roughly in that direction and I'll find it (don't want anyone feeling like this :emote_headwall: reading this post).

Thanks!

 

[Ian Tetzner]

It is not possible to have a shutter speed larger than than 360 degrees (just physics). You can however do slower frame rates yielding longer exposures at 360 degree shutter (think long exposure timelapse). Depending on your scenario you could also experiment with the frame summing and frame averaging features (summing or averaging your choice of 2,4,8, or 16 frames into one frame).

 

[Daniel Stilling]

But you can have longer exposures if you use frame summing. Unfortunately I haven't explored that option yet to give deeper advice, but I would look into that.

 

[Tim Daust]

I saw a conversation about this on facebook today between Mikael Lubtchansky and Greme Nattress.

Mikael Lubtchansky - " if you want to try it, set fps to 1 sec, set shutter to 1 sec / 360 degree then in MENU > SETTINGS > RECORDING > FRAME PROCESSING select frame summing with up to 16 frames (16 secs) for looooong exposure... Can also be done on same 'REC SETTINGS' page in foolcontrol......"

Mikael Lubtchansky - And for zero grain 'pack shot' stills try the frame averaging mode. Thanks Graeme Nattress and RED engineers for those special in camera processing options

Graeme Nattress - Yeah. I use FA for taking stills and you really do get such low noise they're quite amazing, even when developing at high ISO.

I was out doing timelapses this weekend and this was news to me. really awesome and I cannot wait to try it.

 

[Matt Beardsley]

funny, I was just reading about Frame Processing in the Scarlet-W manual, and thinking through cool ways it might be used. Starts on pg. 91 of the current Scarlet-W manual

Anyone else nerding out that hard waiting for these cameras to ship? geeze..

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Whoa, this is so great and so much more than I was expecting.

Ian, every part of me was along the lines of exactly what you wrote and I'm glad you confirmed it (would go crazy if my fundamental understanding of shutter angle got thrown out of wack). Much appreciated. Daniel, Tim, and Matt it looks like I've got some reading to do and see if I can bend some of these newer features to fit the aesthetic I'm going for. Appreciate the deep-dive on the posts, Tim. I'll go through them tomorrow at the studio.

Always would love to hear what everyone thinks, and i'll definitely report back with any updates or findings.

 

[Maik Müller]

If you're ok with lower fps, then internal frame-processing is an option. Great for time-lapse and photography. But if you need to shoot it for motion, lets say at 24fps, then you're longest exposure is 1/24th. Without time-bending there's no way around that. So here this would be stuff for post/VFX-work.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

If you're ok with lower fps, then internal frame-processing is an option. Great for time-lapse and photography. But if you need to shoot it for motion, lets say at 24fps, then you're longest exposure is 1/24th. Without time-bending there's no way around that. So here this would be stuff for post/VFX-work.

Yeah absolutely. Thinking about using an undercrank method with a 360 shutter to achieve the look. Might need to mix with some VFX to really get what we're going, but who knows! I'll most definitely post when I do some test and land on what I'm looking for (or not).