Slowest shutter speed in video mode

[wolf33d]

Put out of here you and your insane posts. What do you think? Your nonsense is already known of your readers. At least of this lurker here before you had ever noticed of this thread. Speaking of devil, I'm still waiting for a fair explanation on the duplicated frames, refuted but still to be clarified.

You can't feel that attacked that you even looked up for all my other posts in this forums, quoted some and answered them to try to put me down? Lol. Feel free to spend your time doing that! 
Concerning this topic it is not my fault if Ebrahim tried nicely to explain something like 10 times and that you still ask / argue / repeat same questions as if he said nothing, which is a lack of respect. 

I never shot time lapse, so I am also interested to know what cameras allow me to shoot continuously (not buffer, not mechanical shutter), limited to the battery, 5 frames per second for example?

Ebrahim gave a decent list, he even offered to help on specific models, again...

[shooter]

You can't feel that attacked that you even looked up for all my other posts in this forums, quoted some and answered them to try to put me down? Lol. Feel free to spend your time doing that! Concerning this topic it is not my fault if Ebrahim tried nicely to explain something like 10 times and that you still ask / argue / repeat same questions as if he said nothing, which is a lack of respect. 

Ebrahim gave a decent list, he even offered to help on specific models, again...

 

Lack of any decency was yours. Any lurker is quick to detect the lighthearted tone of your posts. Unfortunately, you decided to come here and bring to poop in this thread. Go away. I just commented your posts out of this thread. Fact, I hadn't done yet. Think twice, why bother before?

About Ebrahim, dare to become part of his group, you two are of different worlds. Pick up another style to begin with. Regardless, Ebrahim was inaccurate to contradict Rich that this thread was all about time lapse, it is not. Much about electronic shutter than anything else. Still mistaken when insisted to deny Sony is showing 25 fps (and not 5 fps) but so far, still unable to prove to Rich and me what Sony is doing. In contradiction again when says Sony is not duplicating frames. He wrote it, not me!

Rich defied him to "Tell me one mirrored camera that can shoot continuously for 25mins at 5 frames a second with each frame exposed continuously without a gap". He only mentioned the ML 550D. And vaguely later, a list of cameras in the middle of a list of contradictions. It is not lack of respect, they are facts.

 

First, read (not only rich and me, no need to follow my posts) before to try to play the funny guy: 

Might be so with a mechanical shutter, but we don't know what exactly is going on with an electronic shutter, do we? There's software involved and it's hard to know what's being done in camera, there might be some magical readout mojo going on which you might not be able to emulate in post.

 

 

[dahlfors]

There is no such thing as slowing the shutter speed lower than 1/framerate. It's a physical impossibility. Shooting at the lowest video standard frame rate available (23.97p), the lowest shutter you can achieve is 1/23.97s. 

With a physical shutter, yes.

I just want to clarify that it is not a physical impossibility if you have a camera without physical shutter / mirror in the way (although the way you described it is the correct way that cameras function today):

Imagine a camera with a sensor that captures light constantly into a 10 second buffer. It would constantly capture more light as time goes by, constantly throwing away the data that is over 10 seconds old. Imagine the imaging processor requesting light captured at any specified shutter speed between 1/8000 and the maximum of 10 seconds (as in the buffer) for every given frame written to the file.

Even though a camera functioning like this is purely fictional as for now - this IS physically possible to create.

With really long shutter speeds it would produce smooth non-stuttering footage that is actually 24/25/30/50/60fps, where everything that moves fast enough would have a crazy dream-like motion to it. The question is rather why someone would put down the effort to create a camera functioning like this, since it's unlikely an effect that would have that many use cases. Perhaps it will be done some day to achieve other goals - like better DR or for the possibility to choose shutter speed in post for raw stills.

[Volker Schmidt]

@shooter @wolf33d - it seems that you have a personal history on this blog... I´am not native english speaker, so I´am not able to register all nuances in your dispute... so I cannot/will not take one side in this matter - but when it becomes so harsh, it doesn´t makes fun to anybody.

I think it must be allowed to joking a bit, and without intending to annoy someone special, this thread feels a bit like a wild roller coaster ride:)
But this point even makes fun in blogs... and have its own kind of suspense:)

In this case some points are really often repeated, so I ask me what I can add to make it more clear (from my view:) without pretending the super-wise guy:)

@shooter - you are finally asking, which cameras allows you to shoot really slow shutter speeds in video mode.
I could answer it for my own camera - 5dmkII and therefore for all Canon Cameras with Live view and Magic Lantern ability:
With magic lantern (per mode-fps override) you can record every possible framerate down from 24p to 2p - with synchronized slowshutterspeeds (1/2 second - 2fps) or (1/5sec - 5fps) for example.
In Live view mode there is no mechanical shutter active (in video mode). All Canon dslrs have also an electronic shutter. Without it, the camera would sounds like a helicopter during shooting video:), (apart from that, it would be impossible with that kind of mechanical shutter).

This footage, you can slow down in editor - for example to "realtime" (choppy with motion blur, depending of the shutter speed).
Here an Example from Chungking Express/Wong Kar Wei:
This kind, it looks when frames are duplicated to the desired framerate (24/25p)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjd7PFf_TFw

Or you you can speed it up, then its a time-lapse sequence, but more smooth in motion. - like in richg101s example.

The effect of slow shutter speed is the smeary motion blur. The advantage is to keep Iso low, which means clear images with less noise.

@dahlfors - your future technology theory about the fact, which Ebrahim determined: "There is no such thing as slowing the shutter speed lower than 1/framerate. It's a physical impossibility."  - doesn´t work:) - it´s a natural law! - regardless of the shutter technique (manual/electronic).
It´s hard to explain with my english. 

You said: "I just want to clarify that it is not a physical impossibility" ("Imagine a camera with a sensor that captures light constantly into a 10 second buffer. It would constantly capture more light as time goes by, constantly throwing away the data that is over 10 seconds old."

When you choose a framerate, you decide to split the time of a second in so and so many pieces/frames.
Per natural law, the maximum of exposing-time for each frame within this second is logically 1/frame-rate.  (the second divides with the number of frames)

Your plan, to "capture more light as time goes by" fails, because your captured-light doesn't fit "later" - to the meanwhile-moved-objects:)

 

[dahlfors]

@dahlfors - your future technology theory about the fact, which Ebrahim determined: "There is no such thing as slowing the shutter speed lower than 1/framerate. It's a physical impossibility."  - doesn´t work:) - it´s a natural law! - regardless of the shutter technique (manual/electronic).
It´s hard to explain with my english. 

You said: "I just want to clarify that it is not a physical impossibility" ("Imagine a camera with a sensor that captures light constantly into a 10 second buffer. It would constantly capture more light as time goes by, constantly throwing away the data that is over 10 seconds old."

When you choose a framerate, you decide to split the time of a second in so and so many pieces/frames.
Per natural law, the maximum of exposing-time for each frame within this second is logically 1/frame-rate.  (the second divides with the number of frames)

Your plan, to "capture more light as time goes by" fails, because your capturing light doesn't fit "later" - to the meanwhile-moved-objects:)

No, it works. I'm not sure if there's a language barrier here or not, but I'll try to explain a bit better:

When you choose a frame rate, you set the amount of photo frames that should exist in a motion sequence - that's it. There's no natural rule telling what the single still frame can be or can't be.

Imagine 24 cameras that you set to take a 1 second long exposure, and these cameras trigger 1/24th of a second after each other. If you stack these photo frames after each other in a motion sequence it will work - but any motion will have a crazy motion blur effect.

...and using a sensor in that kind of sense is exactly what I was talking about. There is NO natural rule that you are breaking - since all you do is capturing light data - and how you process that light data to motion picture sequences is up to the techniques involved.

In today's sensors the exposure time does not overlap. Technologically - if you have a sensor that can store and buffer all the light data that hits the sensor - there is nothing that says that exposures can not overlap. If you have a sensor that constantly buffers the data for the last 10 seconds of light hitting the sensor (forget about exposure time - think of it as recording light data only), you can just request to read the data that you need.

Another way of thinking about it:

Imagine a sensor and a camera that you point to a scene, and the sensor being able to record every single photon hitting the sensor. You point it to a scene recording for one hour - and it has stored every single photon that has bounced from the scene and hit the sensor since. If you have all that photon data in addition to keeping track of when the photons hit the sensor - you can recreate any given moment during that one hour as a still photo - at any exposure time you want. ...or, you could recreate it as a motion picture sequence - with any crazy exposure time as you want. The same thing you could do with a sensor and a shorter buffer (one hour would require very large amount of storage, somewhere around 2-10 seconds would be more realistically achievable if you used a buffering technique with today's memory).

So, technologically only things that matter are: that you have captured the photons in addition to knowing when the photons hit the sensor. If you have that data, it's up to the image processing what you do with that data.

In this sense you could also have frameless motion sequences - where there aren't still images getting replaced as a sequence of images - but only actual pixels changing over time. But that's a whole other story...

[shooter]

@Volker, there's nothing to mark in a negative way the past history between me and the other disrespectful poster. I wouldn't consider someone kidding when someone tries to diminish you in front of others. Distorting the sake of the discussion. This is not a soccer's dispute. I only answered in the same tone. My concern is I don't want to lose time with jokes, personal affairs in this thread. 

On topic now, I don't put in doubt what Ebrahim generally and you have written. I just see some questions without to be answered yet. Magic Lantern is a hack. I would like to listen about cameras straight out the box. But, in the end any information is welcome. Thank you.

I insist with no mechanical shutter (really matters for the discussion of this thread), because as others have noticed, electronic shutter is the whole point of this thread to extract from the starting point topic.

[richg101]

FFS.  how about rather than debating something that benefits no one, and is impossible to debate without knowing exactly what's happening inside the camera, why not go and shoot something and benefit from the feature.   It's shooting 24/25p, and with a shutter speed of 1/4 or 1/5th of a second.  That's whats on the screen, so that's what's happening.  The engineers at Sony know more than anyone here.  Canon limits the shutter speed to 1/30th in video mode.  Sony limits to 1/4th of a second.  whether its 25fps with 5 frames duplicated, or 5fps, the result is EXACTLY THE SAME when conformed (sped up) to a smooth motion (600% in 24p/1/4th or 500% 25p/1.5th).

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Yes that was the only incorrect statement, all the rest is true. To get 5fps to play in realtime in a 25p wrapper, frames are repeated to fill the gaps. It's very simple and like what we've been doing for decades in converting frame-rates 23.97 to 24, 25 to dvd, pull-up and pull-down process. 

It's shooting 24/25p, so that's what's happening. 

No. that's the issue I am trying to explain, it's not shooting 25p, it's shooting 4p and conforming to 25p, there couldn't be a larger difference between shooting 4p and 25p.

The engineers at Sony know more than anyone here. 

Not more than me about what this feature is.

@OP and readers: It's easy and I hope everyone understands it now after all this typing.

To real life, I have been shooting with it for two days on the Canon and having fun, I urge everyone to try it.

It's a new approach especially for shooting static landscape video at night, you can get amazing luminosity at very low ISOs in dark night (hence I could push higher in-camera sharpness and colour fidelilty without blockyness in lowlight you get at 25p)

Here's frames at nearly black (with the cool SLR Magic Rangefinder blue flares), looks quite normal video in motion just as long as no moving subjects go in and out.

Files are so clean that I added grain in these pitch black night videos, and can be pushed so hard without breaking to get very high saturation and strong shifts.

I am still undecided whether I like it playing at normal speed (stuttering) or sped up (fluid). I think I am leaning towards sped up.
 

 

[shooter]

@Ebrahim, I'm sorry to contradict you but the list of contradictions is longer than that. I think you're missing the point of rich, agolex, also my point because you completely ignore the chance of some mojo introduced by Sony based on the electronic shutter of their cameras. Without mention the convenience to have it in camera. No need for post emulation too.

My initial idea: what cameras are doing the same? You have posted those beautiful shots, gave a fair explanation very versatile and complete, but yet unable to prove with a video the same shown with the new Sony cameras.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

@Ebrahim, I'm sorry to contradict you 

Why sorry, it's an disscusion, jump in, no problems

My initial idea: what cameras are doing the same? 

These cameras: they shoot video at low framerates and shutter speed down to 1/4s and less.

Qouting myself

-Sony's A7 series, rx10, rx100 series -All Canon (DSLRs starting from 1100D to 5Diii, eos m1/2/3, C100/300 mark I and mark II, XC10 (at 4k), camcorders like the xf105/205/305 xa10,)-Panasonic GH4 and FZ1000 and G7 and others-All Blackmagic cameras (at 4K except pocket, HD)-All Pentax DSLRs (at 4K)-All camcorders (af100, fs100, fs700, fs7, xf, x300k, x70, ex1/3, hpx series, canon entire beginner vixia line and pro xf line, jvcs handycams up to ls300,)-Film cameras-My Samsung wb305 point and shoot, Galaxy cameras, Samsung S6 and note4 smartphones,

Do mean you need proof as in me finding these cameras and seeing if the function is not broken/disabled? I have a canon, gh4 at hand and a samsung now if you want that. Perhaps you're skeptic they do it and this is why the thread is going in circles?

 You have posted those beautiful shots,

Thanks glad you find them beautiful. I was thinking the blue flares are ruining the two videos for viewers.

you completely ignore the chance of some mojo introduced by Sony based on the electronic shutter of their cameras

They all do it with an electronic shutter, and Sony's electronic shutters (and every other e-shutter from any brand for that matter) function the same. All video cameras use e-shutters (well  except for the monster Sony f65, mech-shutter), it's not special.

I don't understand what you find incorrect or contradicted, and what the goal is, is it that you are buying a new camera upgrade and want to make sure it does the slow shutter video ability we're talking about? If you're looking for camera buying advice, tell us more about your shooting and requirements, budget and we'll gladly help, 

are you un-decided between the rx10 and gh4 and nx1 as the OP says?

[shooter]

@Ebrahim, I appreciate your care. It can be any camera. I just don't understand how this feature can work. I mean, in camera, not post. Time lapse technique in Photo mode? So, RAW too? Continuous shooting without gaps? Not limited for some seconds or few minutes? Electronic shutter without the risk to reduce the life of the equipment? Reliable?

So why the A7R M2 is presented as a new mark for time lapse then? Only because higher resolution?

Yes, I'm afraid we're speaking theoretically and the things will not work in the same way as happens with the Sony cameras in practice where this feature is shown as 25 fps included. There's also a second opinion that there's a good chance Sony is doing some mojo inside the camera. At least they don't require post. Is the post production the only difference and complementary step? Will the result end the same? Yes, I would love to see a test. Normal speed. Identical to that video posted in the first post of this thread. A shootout: a Sony camera versus any other camera to use electronic shutter going with post. We would see then if theory matches real life cases made by Sony. Not arguing exactly about the results. They can be the same. The fact is filmmaking is not only about pictures. The way to arrive there (how easy is, the cost, the number of possible shots with this or that technique, how many minutes of footage in the end of the day, etc) is also a precious piece of the maths. Magic Lantern, for example, isn't a piece of cake for lots of people.

[dahlfors]

FFS.  how about rather than debating something that benefits no one, and is impossible to debate without knowing exactly what's happening inside the camera, why not go and shoot something and benefit from the feature.   It's shooting 24/25p, and with a shutter speed of 1/4 or 1/5th of a second.  That's whats on the screen, so that's what's happening.  The engineers at Sony know more than anyone here.  Canon limits the shutter speed to 1/30th in video mode.  Sony limits to 1/4th of a second.  whether its 25fps with 5 frames duplicated, or 5fps, the result is EXACTLY THE SAME when conformed (sped up) to a smooth motion (600% in 24p/1/4th or 500% 25p/1.5th).

I agree, find out what can be done with a camera, and find out what you can make with the features. Your results were beautiful!

Andrew Reid also used this effect in his music video that was featured in the A7S review, and I found it worked wonderfully as an effect in the music video: http://www.eoshd.com/2014/10/sony-a7s-review-part-2-conclusion/

[shooter]

A last note only to let who cares noticed, I sent my apologies for my overreacting. Civilized people react accordingly. Glad now to post that the feedback received tops.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

 I would love to see a test. Normal speed. Identical to that video posted in the first post of this thread. 

Okay I'll do it for you, It's 4:27AM so no lots of moving subjects from the balcony but I'll do it anyway (catch movement of a couple of people, at 1\4s like the Sony, and also will show you the farther extreme canon offers of going to 5 full second shutter speed shooting in video mode, e-shutter in-camera). Low fps/shutter below 1/24s is a very interesting way of shooting and this thread kindled my love for it.

I am in a small egyptian town with 512mb internet connection so sorry uploading will take some time, I'll keep it at 1-2 second clips just as proof of concept.

@Ebrahim, I appreciate your care. It can be any camera. I just don't understand how this feature can work. I mean, in camera, not post. Time lapse technique in Photo mode? So, RAW too? Continuous shooting without gaps? Not limited for some seconds or few minutes? Electronic shutter without the risk to reduce the life of the equipment? Reliable?

 

I'll thoroughly explain the feature technically (i discovered a few stuff).

 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

@shooter I just shot this for you, nothing that looks good but just showing the feature technically. First scenes is a quick comparison between using this for realtime (the one you're interested in I think) vs using it for speeding up motion. Last two scenes are 5s shutter speed so realtime is not an option (it's less than a quarter fps, so it'd be looking at a slide show of photos with a 5 second interval), it's great for fast and easy timelapse I just did this all in 30 minutes or so instead of regular mechanical timelapse that would have required me to halt enormous raw files, stitch in post, wear out the shutter. This comes a ready tiny MOV file off the card.

This thread made me fall in love with under-cranking low fps shooting.

[shooter]

Thank you. Nice shots. My concern is about reliability in continuous shooting. I also thought they would offer only buffering, not continuous even only a few 5 or 4 frames.

So RAW is out of question with electronic shutter?

What else have you discovered? You said so.

[shooter]

@ebrahim, okay, I have now a G7 ready in hands. Now, can you explain to me how can I mimic this effect here? https://vimeo.com/135120108

[DayRaven]

On 11/04/2016 at 6:03 AM, shooter said:

@ebrahim, okay, I have now a G7 ready in hands. Now, can you explain to me how can I mimic this effect here? https://vimeo.com/135120108

I don't know specifically with the G7, but there are four ways and the G7 will be able to do one for sure:

 

1) Set your frame rate very low, e.g. 5fps - This will give you that stop start motion effect.

Set your shutter speed very long, e.g. 1/5 of a second - This will give that motion blur in each frame.

 

2) Set your frame rate to the same as the rest of your project, e.g. 25fps

Set your shutter speed very long, longer than theoretically possible with the fps, e.g. 1/5 of a second

-----

If your camera lets you choose a very low framerate, or a shutter speed much longer than your framerate, then choosing method 1 or 2 will give you easy, quick predictable results. Not all cameras do though, so you may find you can only choose 1 or 2 not both, or maybe you can't choose either, in which case you will have to use 3 or 4 below:

-----

3) Switch into timelapse mode, set the number of pictures taken every second to a low number, e.g. 5

Set the shutter speed very long, e.g. 1/5 of a second

 

4) Set your camera to Manual Stills mode, choose an electronic shutter to reduce wear and tear, set your shutter speed long e.g. 1/5 of a second

Choose a burst mode, it's worth investigating third party remotes if your camera has limited burst modes.

Stitch the resultant batch of photo's together into a video clip in post process

-----

These options can be fiddely to get working properly, a good timelapse mode can give you a great many options and when you understand, you can use them to get excellent results. Setting your camera to M mode in stills can be an exercise in frustration, but when it works well,  you can get the highest quality results, especially if you shoot in raw, but expect to spend a lot longer getting it right both in camera at the time and in post process.

[Justin Bacle]

Might sound dumb, but as I understood it it goes like this.

Recording is 25fps (for illustration purposes)

So every of the 25 frames contains the sum of the five previous frames.

for example, video frame one would have the sum of images 1 to 5
video frame 2 would have the sum of images 2 to 6
video frame 3 would have the sum of images 3 to 7
and so on....

That's how i would capture 25 fps with 1/5th second shutter speed

[shooter]

8 hours ago, DayRaven said:

I don't know specifically with the G7, but there are four ways and the G7 will be able to do one for sure:

 

1) Set your frame rate very low, e.g. 5fps - This will give you that stop start motion effect.

Set your shutter speed very long, e.g. 1/5 of a second - This will give that motion blur in each frame.

 

2) Set your frame rate to the same as the rest of your project, e.g. 25fps

Set your shutter speed very long, longer than theoretically possible with the fps, e.g. 1/5 of a second

-----

If your camera lets you choose a very low framerate, or a shutter speed much longer than your framerate, then choosing method 1 or 2 will give you easy, quick predictable results. Not all cameras do though, so you may find you can only choose 1 or 2 not both, or maybe you can't choose either, in which case you will have to use 3 or 4 below:

-----

3) Switch into timelapse mode, set the number of pictures taken every second to a low number, e.g. 5

Set the shutter speed very long, e.g. 1/5 of a second

 

4) Set your camera to Manual Stills mode, choose an electronic shutter to reduce wear and tear, set your shutter speed long e.g. 1/5 of a second

Choose a burst mode, it's worth investigating third party remotes if your camera has limited burst modes.

Stitch the resultant batch of photo's together into a video clip in post process

-----

These options can be fiddely to get working properly, a good timelapse mode can give you a great many options and when you understand, you can use them to get excellent results. Setting your camera to M mode in stills can be an exercise in frustration, but when it works well,  you can get the highest quality results, especially if you shoot in raw, but expect to spend a lot longer getting it right both in camera at the time and in post process.

But, even able to do one for sure, this "one" can end to devastate the shutter, no?

My point is: can G7 offer the same as A7RII?

A7RII offers slow shutter in video 25fps 4K. Can I mimic the same with G7 or similar camera without devastating the shutter?