Shooting off 180°

[Linda Barzini]

I pretty much exclusively shoot at a 180° shutter angle. I can only remember stylized music videos, opening of Saving Private Ryan, and now the UFC (I think for slo-mo playback without motion blur) using different shutter angles.

Aside from the 172.8° for 50MHz countries, does anyone shoot off 180° and why?

 

[Levi Arnold]

I generally stay on 180º as well. For lowlight I'll increase that to give me some more light (so long as there isn't much movement) but when I shoot slo-motion I always make my shutter speed double of the frame rate so I can slow it down extra without blur. Oh and for motocross and football I'll bring the angle down to give it a sharper, more jagged look. 180º is my go-to angle though.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I do all kinds of shutter speeds.

If you got good light and want both 180 plus 90 or 45 deg shutter you can simply turn on HDRx 1 or 2 stops. then increase iso for the dark track to double or 4 times A track values. If done with a lot of light and low iso for the A track the results on A and X track are very similar but X got half or 1/4 motion blur. Works well when shooting stills at the same time as filming as then you can have 180 for the film and get 90 deg or les for the stills.

I assume (but don't remember) if HDRx also suport burst mode so you can burst high data rate frames when you want to capture a still and get it in that dual exposure time that HDRx allow.

For slomo I find 360 to work quite well so if you shoot 48fps 360 you get a perfect 24 if you speed 200% in post and you got a half speed that is looking quite ok. It's what Peter Jackson did for the hobbit... even though he also played the slim back at HFR which looks terrible if you ask me but played in 24fps 48fps 360 looks quite fine as slomo. and 360 48fps is far more easy to post time warp to slower speeds than 24fps so shooting those frames will certainly help if you want to have a perfect 24fps but might want to slow sorting down in post.

i think most of this camera test I did this weekend in 100fps 360 which is possible to frame blend over two and speed 200% to get to perfect 25fps 180deg. And to me that 100fps played back at 25fps looks perfectly fine, now it's only some slopy farm pictures and no fast action but I done the same with faster moving footage and had nothing to be to regretful about.


https://vimeo.com/161505922

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I pretty much exclusively shoot at a 180° shutter angle. I can only remember stylized music videos, opening of Saving Private Ryan, and now the UFC (I think for slo-mo playback without motion blur) using different shutter angles.

Aside from the 172.8° for 50MHz countries, does anyone shoot off 180° and why?

I'm not that fixed on 180 degrees really. I shoot what is necessary but never go over 225, that's video-land if it's not a static shot. 225 degrees is quite good in interior low movement scenes, never action or too much movement though. But as for other stuff I usually go down to around 145 sometimes as a standard. I'm not really digging the digital motion blur at 180, it's not like 35mm film, it's something else and it's not really looking that great sometimes. Going down a notch creates sharper 4K images and it helps "crisp" the image a bit without going Saving Private Ryan.

Other then that I usually shoot 45 or 90 degrees for shots that will be stabilized in post, adding pixel motion blur afterwards.

 

[jordan levy]

sometimes for green screen and vfx work as well as very high speeds ill shoot at 45-90 degrees, and ill shoot 225 when shooting slow motion if its that instance where the director says we will probably speed this up in post, so it retains a little motion blur.

 

[Jordan Buck]

Ill happily shoot 90 and 45 degrees when shooting high speed, I dont find it working as much for 50 but speeds over 50, for exmaple 75/100 fps etc. I find it works well to keep the image sharp.
Its always a stylistic choice as well, sharper = more video like

 

[Nick Morrison]

For slomo I find 360 to work quite well so if you shoot 48fps 360 you get a perfect 24 if you speed 200% in post and you got a half speed that is looking quite ok.

Agreed Björn, we shoot 48fps 360 degree a lot on Dragon. Looks great on Dragon, especially if motion isn't too extreme.

The benefits are:

1) When shooting 48fps 1/48...speeding up 200% creates very "real" and usable 24fps playback, which my clients use quite a bit. By comparison, shooting 48fps 1/96 creates more jittery footage at 24fps (because "real time" footage at 24fps can look "off" with a sharper 1/96 shutter).

2) Shooting 1/48 at 48fps means you don't lose a stop of light. We have same exposure as 23.98 at 1/48

3) We can keep same blackshade as 23.98 1/48...when you drop to 48fps and shoot 1/48.

4) As long as motion we're capturing isn too extreme, works surprisingly well (which is why we've kept doing it!)