Using a faster shutter to replace ND.

[Asher Vast]

I've been shooting a lot of slowmo scenes in daylight lately. I would typically shot 120fps 4K at a 240 shutter but I would still need to use ND to stop down the daylight for proper exposure. Just last week, my ND filter broke on a shoot that was all slowmo of dance scenes outdoors. I used a higher shutter speed to achieve proper exposure and when reviewing the footage and it looks very sharp and quite good IMO. There's hardly any motion blur at all. Has anyone else experimented with this? For the purpose of shooting 120fps and higher, in daylight, is there any reason you would still use ND instead instead of just raising your shutter speed?

 

[Rob_Austin]

Shutter adjustment usually is to change sharpness and motion blur. If you want to maintain the blur level in camera, then you need ND.

If you like the look you get, then keep it up.

 

[Matt Bai]

All those "Step up" movies were filmed extremely high.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Shutter angle is a creative choice. If you're ok with the sharper motion, then go for it. Especially at extreme slomo, it's hard to notice the difference to be honest. At 23.98 however, anything other than 180 starts to be more noticeable.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I do it all the time. If I get to decide 33 fps slomo and sound stretched to fit and short shutter makes pretty much any film better.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Shutter angle is a creative choice. If you're ok with the sharper motion, then go for it. Especially at extreme slomo, it's hard to notice the difference to be honest. At 23.98 however, anything other than 180 starts to be more noticeable.

This 100%

 

[Tom Van]

All the time. At higher frame rates, I tend to shoot higher shutter speeds to get rid of the blur. In slow motion, that blur makes it look slightly out of focus to me.

 

[Owen Rennie]

Plus it makes the frame grabs better

 

[Peter Dmitriyev]

yes if you're at 120 you don't have to do just 240 however if you go TOO high it will begin to get very noticeable and have a very nasty aesthetic. I ran out of ND's once too and shot 60 or 120 slow mo at too high of a shutter (I forget what it was maybe 500-800++) and the slow mo did NOT look good at all it was extremely stuttery and aesthetically very amateurish looking so be careful I wouldn't go too high, make sure to test.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

I do higher shutter alot and the thing to look out for is subjects or camera that has a panning movement. Things traveling towards you or from you is not so sensitive.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I usually have a faster shutter than the normal 180 degrees, since I feel it smears digital images and loose clarity otherwise. Sometimes I go higher if I know I need to do post-stabilizations.

 

[Cole Sprague]

I usually shoot for stills when working on trophy truck races so my shutter sometimes ends up as high as 1/4000, the video still looks pretty good especially with action in the frame like this https://youtu.be/wfEl9PaGSXw?t=4m36s