A reader of my Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter recently asked me what I meant about a “stuttering” appearance for videos captured with a fast shutter speed, which I discussed in an earlier newsletter. This is a good example of a situation where a picture (or video in this case) is worth a thousand words.
In the brief clip below, the video is split between a 1/2000th of a second shutter speed on the left and a 1/30th of a second shutter speed on the right. The left side of the video exhibits motion that is not fluid (if you’ll pardon the pun) because of the fast shutter speed.
When you use a fast shutter speed in video, fast motion gets frozen, and the sense of motion gets lost to some extent. Looking more closely at the video above, you’ll notice that the water droplets on the left side of the frame don’t fall with a smooth motion, but rather jump from one position to the next.
In the video on the right side you can see that motion is rendered much more smoothly. Of course, the video on the right also exhibits motion blur to a much greater extent than in the video on the left, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your intent.
The bottom line is that the shutter speed you use when recording a video can have a significant impact on the overall look and feel of your video, so it is worth giving careful consideration to which shutter speed you’re using when establishing your overall exposure settings for video.