I shot this Around the School video using 24 frames per second because I wanted it to be more cinematic. It was a sunny day, but I didn’t want to shoot in complete manual mode because I knew that I would be going in and out of the school. I figured let the camera adjust for the changes in light and shutter speed on its own. Well that was a mistake that can ruin your footage. I’m leaving it up here for 2 reasons. One the lesson it teaches and two the content is still good.
Shoot Manual
It’s worth noting that once you give your camera auto control of the shutter speed and f-stop, you generally won’t know what it chooses. For this video mine chose 1/3200 of second with an f2.8. I know that’s crazy, but that’s what auto gave me. I know this because I used a free program called Exiftool to analyse the file’s metadata. So much for my cinematic looking footage. According to the 180 degree rule, people should set their shutter speed to double their frame rate. So it should have chosen 1/50th of a second, or at least something close to that and then used a much smaller f-stop. Not a wide open f2.8. Obviously it didn’t, and hence my recommendation for you to learn from my mistake and use manual mode.
The problems aren’t too noticeable when the camera is still. It’s when I pan from one side to the other that things like really jittery. I looked on one website and they suggested that videographers use this high shutter speed affect to make the audience feel anxious or jittery. Anyway that was not my intention. I learned the hard way. Also post image stabilization will not help this. It makes it worse.
Use an ND Filter
Next time I shot something like this I will divide it into sections. I will still walk around with the camera but I will choose my shutter speed and f-stop manually for the lighting area I am in. I will use an ND filter when I am outside to help reduce the light so I need to have a super small f-stop or a really fast shutter speed. Then when I move on to a different lighting area, I will stop the camera; choose new settings and shoot again. Hope you found this helpful.
