00:00Hello my friends and welcome to this first video in what I hope will be a series I intend to
00:10make
00:10on wildlife filming tips, techniques, tricks, things that'll help you get the best footage
00:20you possibly can. And to start off with I thought we'd look at the subject of frame rates
00:28and in particular how we set our shutter speed according to what our frame rate is.
00:39That's the basic foundation stone of getting the kind of effect that you want to achieve
00:48when filming wildlife in particular. And not just wildlife in fact for pretty much every kind of
00:55filming that you want to do. It's absolutely key that you get your frame rate nailed. I thought
01:02I'd start with this subject apart from it being the very basic foundation stone of filming.
01:11When I was leading the photography workshops here back in January
01:19there were a lot of photographers, guests who were trying their hand for the first time at doing some
01:30filming. And a lot of them were struggling to achieve what they wanted to. And it all came down to
01:42basically having the incorrect shutter speed for the frame rate that they were shooting at.
01:50And it comes about basically as wildlife photographers
01:56having dialed in their exposure
02:01mostly to freeze the action of the subject they were photographing.
02:08They would then switch to video mode and carry on shooting at exactly the same settings because that was the
02:15right exposure.
02:17And the result was mostly jumpy footage, very stuttery and not the smooth flowing film that they hoped to create.
02:33So trying to get your head around frame rates is absolutely key in in filming.
02:42So I'm not going to get into too much detail about the science behind frame rate and shutter speed
02:53and how they relate to each other. I've actually written an article on my blog page with a little bit
03:00more detail which you can have a look at.
03:03I'll put the link on the screen here and in the description below so feel free to have a look
03:08at that.
03:10What I want to do is cover the very basic settings which will help get you started
03:18and on the right path. I should also add that this video for a lot of you will be too
03:26basic. You'll already know this stuff.
03:29In which case please feel free to ignore me and hopefully come back in another video where I'll go into
03:40other techniques you might not know, tips and tricks and what have you.
03:43So for those of you coming at it as complete novices, what you should understand is that
03:53there's two frame rates that you need to consider when recording video. The first frame rate is your
04:02project frame rate, your timeline frame rate. And when you open up any video editing software
04:11you have what's called a timeline and onto that timeline you'll drag your video clips that you want
04:19to edit, cut, splice together, add your transitions, titles, effects, color correct and all of that stuff
04:28to create your film. And that timeline has a frame rate that you need to set, a project frame rate.
04:38That frame rate is unchangeable. Once you've set it before you start your project you can't change it in the
04:48middle.
04:49So the second frame rate is the frame rate that you're going to shoot at and that is changeable
04:57according to what it is that you want to to do. Whether you want to record something at normal speed,
05:02such as me now talking to camera, or if you want to record slow motion so that you can really
05:12see that
05:13fine detail of the action in slow motion. Going back for a moment to our project frame rate,
05:23we'd normally set the project to a frame rate of 25 frames per second here in Europe or I think
05:33in the
05:33US 30 frames per second is the standard and in some instances they also use 24. But I think 25
05:44and 30 are
05:45the most commonly used project frame rates. Okay, so what frame rate do I need for any particular instance?
05:56So if I'm shooting, if I want to shoot a normal motion, as I mentioned, such as me now talking
06:07to camera,
06:09I'd want to shoot at the same frame rate as my timeline so that there is a one-to-one
06:16playback.
06:16It plays back at exactly the speed of the timeline, in which case I need to film also film at
06:22that same
06:23rate. So basically for my timeline of 25 frames per second, I'd set in camera my frame rate to 25
06:35frames
06:36per second. If I want to slow things down, I need to increase that frame rate.
06:45So if I want to slow that slow things down at just a little bit, I could set 50 frames
06:50per second on my
06:5225 frame per second timeline, or if I want to slow them down a lot, I can set it to
06:57100 frames per second
06:59on my 25 frame per second timeline. The thing you need to remember is your shooting frame rate should
07:08always be a multiple number of your timeline frame rate. So for my timeline of 25 frames per second,
07:16I need to shoot at 25 frames per second, 50, 100, 200, etc. Always a multiple.
07:23If my timeline is 30 frames per second, again I need to shoot at 30 frames per second, 60, 120,
07:34240 frames per second. Always a multiple of that project frame rate. And that will give you the
07:41smoothest playback possible. Now how does our frame rate relate to our shutter speed, which is the key
07:48thing. And it's basically a very simple rule, which is always set your shutter speed to double
07:56your frame rate number. So again, using my example of the 25 frames per second timeline,
08:06shooting at normal speed, 25 frames per second, I'd want to be setting my shutter speed to 1 50th of
08:15a
08:15second. If I want to shoot slow motion, super slow motion at 100 frames per second, then I'd set my
08:25shutter
08:25speed to 1 200th of a second. It's always going to be double the number of your frame rates. The
08:36question
08:36then becomes seeing as your shutter speed is already spoken for, that's fixed in stone, it's always going
08:44to be double your frame rate. You can't use that to control your exposure. So that leaves us basically
08:52with ISO and aperture to control our exposures with. ISO you can set to the minimum value, okay, but you
09:05can't go further than that. And then aperture, you can close it down, and you might have to on a
09:12bright,
09:12sunny day. But the problem is that you might not be able to achieve then the desired effect, which as
09:20photographers, filmmakers, we all love the blurry background, and all of that. So we need another
09:28method of controlling our, the light that's entering the camera. And that would be achieved
09:37with neutral density filters. The easiest one to use is the variable neutral density filter, which you screw
09:48onto the end of your lens, and then you can adjust the amount of light you want blocked just by
09:58spinning the
10:00filter around. You could also get fixed neutral density filters, which most likely have better optical
10:12qualities. But then again, you'll be, if light changes, then you'll need to be fiddling around,
10:19switching out filters, which you might not want to do. So a variable ND is the way to go.
10:31If you're shooting on very big lenses, which a lot of us use for wildlife, you're not going to find
10:39any kind of filter that'll screw on the end of a big 500mm lens. What you can do though,
10:49is use drop-in filters. Most of the the big professional lenses have a slot at the back
10:58that you can drop a filter in, and you can get a variable ND filter for that purpose.
11:04If you are lucky enough, a lot of the modern cameras that are more video-centric than photo-centric,
11:16they might have a setting called shutter angle, such as this one that I'm shooting on now,
11:22the Panasonic Lumix S5, in which case you can set your shutter angle to 180 degrees,
11:31and you'll never have to think about shutter speed again. It will automatically set to
11:39double whatever your frame rate is, and you don't have to worry about it ever again.
11:44For those of us shooting on some older DSLRs, or on mirrorless cameras that don't have shutter angle
11:52available as an option, you just have to keep in mind that always set your shutter speed to double
12:02your frame rate. Okay, so in a nutshell that just about covers it. The basic rule, just to reiterate one
12:10more time, is to always set your shutter speed at double whatever your frame rate is, and if you do
12:17that
12:19you won't go wrong. So I hope you've enjoyed watching, I hope it's been useful.
12:27Thank you so much for tuning in, and I shall catch up with you again soon with another video.
12:34The next one I plan to do is on putting together a sequence, so I shall catch up with you
12:43then.
12:44Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
13:14Bye.
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