First attempt at intentional motion blur. (In snow)

3JISolvic · Jan 19, 2018

The snow started up again in mid-flight. Got lucky to make it back damage free.

Anthony Viscomi · Jan 19, 2018

Man you were close to those limbs...well done

3JISolvic · Jan 19, 2018

Anthony Viscomi said:
Man you were close to those limbs...well done

Not as close as it looks, but it was a little nerve racking. My house is about 30 feet from the trees so I had a clear run through at about 5 to 10 feet away. The house shielded the wind so I didn’t drift much.

Gerry65 · Jan 19, 2018

Nice. I'm still in the learning phase here...so the blur effect comes from using slower shutter speed than normal. What were your FPS and shutter set at? Thanks.

BD0G · Jan 19, 2018

Nice job! Did you use an ND filter ?

3JISolvic · Jan 19, 2018

It was not very bright out, but I used a polar pro nd4/pl to allow me to lower the shutter speed without the white snow being too dominate.
To answer your question Gerry. Yes. You can always lower your shutter speed manually, but the ND filters allow you to do so with an acceptable exposure that doesn’t blow out your image. I probably could have done without the filter but it helped control the consistency of the exposure . I am pretty new myself as far as being concerned about cinematic quality and motion blur. I have found that a lot of people talk about it, but a good number of their videos don’t really have what I consider to be motion blur . It’s harder than I thought it would be to use blur and achieve a desirable effect. From my limited experience it also has a lot to do with your proximity to the subject . If you are 200+ feet up it can be a mess in my opinion.

3JISolvic · Jan 19, 2018

I forgot to add. I was at 24 fps with 50 or lower shutter speed. It got a little too dark as the snow clouds rolled back in . They came quick too.

Callum · Jan 19, 2018

I'm not really seeing the motion blur, Its a bit choppy watching on my TV.

Are you sure you had a 1/50 shutter speed as you said? Lot of snow and quite bright to get away with an ND4.

black_magic100 · Jan 20, 2018

3JISolvic said:
I forgot to add. I was at 24 fps with 50 or lower shutter speed. It got a little too dark as the snow clouds rolled back in . They came quick too.

I feel like 30 fpd and 60 shutter causes more blur while 24 fps 50 shutter just causes more stutter

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

Thanks for watching Callum and Black Magic. Part of the reason I posted was to possibly learn something. If you don’t mind can you show me an example of the motion blur you or someone else has shot? The close up limb scenes in my vid are the only parts where the motion really blurred from my perspective. As slow as I was going I didn’t expect much more. If you hit pause the foreground limbs etc were what appear to blur at least on my monitor and tv. I definitely used an ND4, 24 FPS at 50 shutter for most of the vid. It was very overcast any more would have been dark that it caused noise. The Last few scenes are evidence of this. It was too dark for even the Nd4 towards the end when I flew up to the front of the house.

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

As far as being choppy. I’d have to agree. I haven’t seen many mavic videos that aren’t a little choppy to me. Especially not low frame rate videos. Going to 60/30 helps but in my attempts it counter acted the close up blur. I’ve only tried it twice though. I guess you could abandon the natural blur for post production?

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

Here are a few examples of the blur I was going for in the vid, but like I said, this was my first attempt. I could be way off.

Callum · Jan 20, 2018

3JISolvic said:
Here are a few examples of the blur I was going for in the vid, but like I said, this was my first attempt. I could be way off.

The blurred sections you highlighted seem to be parts of the tree that are closer to camera and out of focus.

It's hard to describe but the cinematic style your looking for shouldn't look blurred. It's just a slight blur from frame to frame that makes the footage less choppy and pleasing to the eye.

Watching should look normal like a movie, but when you pause on individual frames on a motion scene they will be slightly blurred, where as a high shutter would be sharp on each frame.

To be honest it's not for everyone. Some scenes suit it and others not so much.

Your almost there though.

Maybe try 2.7k @30fps with a 1/60 shutter. Might be a bit smoother.

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

Thanks for the insight. I agree that for aerial footage motion blur is only desirable for certain scenes or types of production. I would really like to see an example or two to help me get a better perspective. I’ve googled it and was surprised to find a lot of talk and very few examples. I found more people complaining about the blur than anything else. I did try the same shots with 30 fps and the closer objects remained sharp or in focus. Even though it’s something I’d only use occasionally I am pretty determined to figure it out . Then on to the next thing.

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

I suspect that the choppiness is due to a combination of my actual motion in the wind and the file handling. I normally like to load from the memory card to a larger less compressed format prior to editing but didn’t have the time or space on my SSD. I went from MP4 to pro res 422 in FCPX and straight to you tube from there .

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

Would Frame blending or optical flow help?

Gerry65 · Jan 20, 2018

I think more blur occurs on fast moving objects such as a waterfall. And again, I thought I’d read that a shutter speed lower than the 180 rule (I think that’s the rule suggesting shutter speed is twice your fps) is necessary to achieve that effect. I haven’t tried this yet but I’ve been curious and have tried to read up on it.

3JISolvic · Jan 20, 2018

Agreed Gerry. From my understanding in a scene as slow as my video only a very small amount of blur would be tolerable. I did follow the 2x shutter speed . 24 fps 1/50 shutter. Technically 2 extra frames per second though .