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Hi I am experimenting with trying to capture a hand crank style video capturing by messing with the shutter. On my camera I can get the required look of a 1/3 shutter but it only lets me take photos at this shutter. Visually on the camera screen it looks like how I want it to capture but in video mode my shutter only opens up to 1/24 which seems to equate to a 360 shutter angle. So I guess my question is can you open up to a shutter angle wider than 360 or is that physically impossible... I’m a bit confused anyhow and wondering if someone can set me straight ?
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360 degrees means the shutter is open all the time. You can't be more open then fully open. One 1/24 of a sec is the longest you can have on digital camera at 24fps. 

In that case you can only extend the period the shutter is open by reducing the frame rate. at 12 fps with a 360 shutter angle, its open 1/12 of a sec

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Some cameras have slow shutter which can work in video modes. For example my GH4 can do 1/8s shutter in video mode. It is not normal for current video cameras to have this much flexibility so you have to find out which couple of models are available which can do it if this is the type of effect you want to archive

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As Phil said, the shutter can't be more open than 360 degrees and after that you are lowering frame rate. The cameras have "sensor fps" and "base fps" which may or may not be the same depending on the settings. For example it is normal to shoot 120fps on sensor and recording it at 24base or 48base or 50 or 59.94base fps. The same with slow shutter mode, you have 8fps on sensor and recording 24 base fps or 25 base or 29.976base etc.  The base fps is basically just how the metadata is set on the recorded file. It can be manipulated later on the files by simple metadata change if needed, all the frames will stay intact 

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Though slow shutter on high base fps can't be fully changed in post because the frames and motion blur are extended to adjacent base fps frames.

If you shoot normal fps at 360 degree shutter it would be possible to simulate slow shutter in post very well. Will take so work of course. And it would not help with exposure if you want to shoot in low light so there is practical differences

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Thanks everyone I’m starting to understand more ?

 

the time base you capture at is so so so crucial.... check this

To further illustrate... 3fps played back at 24fps : https://youtu.be/rlHX4nyid-Y
And 3fps played blacked at 3fps: https://youtu.be/DPYXTrx1-68

Very interesting you truly do learn something new everyday ?

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You see that effect in some Wong Kar-Wai movies, 6 or 8 fps, though because it had to be finished on film, the footage had to be step-printed up to 24 fps for projection. But playing 6 fps at 6 fps is the same effect.

 

This isn't how Silent Era movies looked though. They shot at 16 to 18 fps with a 180 degree shutter, the hand-cranking causing subtle variations in speed that affected the motion and exposure. Then there is the effect of speed-changing the footage to look normal at 24 fps.

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On 12/24/2019 at 5:01 AM, Daniel Anthony Porto said:
 
Hi I am experimenting with trying to capture a hand crank style video capturing by messing with the shutter. On my camera I can get the required look of a 1/3 shutter but it only lets me take photos at this shutter. Visually on the camera screen it looks like how I want it to capture but in video mode my shutter only opens up to 1/24 which seems to equate to a 360 shutter angle. So I guess my question is can you open up to a shutter angle wider than 360 or is that physically impossible... I’m a bit confused anyhow and wondering if someone can set me straight ?

Hand cranked film projected in the Silent Era looked.. normal. 

What modern audiences associate with hand-cranked footage is largely based upon a number of artifacts subsequent to their initial exhibition.

It also depends on the Era of which you speak;  40 some-odd years encompasses a LOT of technological change, aesthetics and production methods.

Hand cranking wasn't so primitive.  Sven Nyquist used a hand-cranked 2709 shooting color negative for Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" (1982) that was intercut with Arri 35BL footage and no one noticed. (I have been searching for this article from American Cinematographer for reference, but have been unable to locate it yet.  Hope my memory hasn't failed...)

Image "pulsing", often attributed to irregular hand-cranking, is 99.9% incorrect;  it was the rack and tank processing of release prints that introduced this artifact into the prints.  No cinematographer worth their salt allowed density pulsing in their camera original!  From about 1895 to around 1912  (depending on a lot of factors), the cinematographer not only loaded their own magazines, they perforated the film just prior to shooting!  They did clip tests on set to determine exposure, cranked the camera and worked the geared head with the other free hand.  After shooting was done, they were responsible for processing their own footage on racks, most with their own modification.  This mostly consisted of a sliding top bar that allowed the film to slip on the rack and vary where the highest velocity of developer played upon the film, minimizing any density variations.

Unfortunately,  very little care was taken with the high volume processing of the release prints and static racks were used and introduced these density pulses.

I have timed over 600 features for the Library of Congress and many of them are classic silent era masterpiece camera original negatives and can tell you emphatically that very, very few of them suffer from this defect.

Speed issues, flicker, poor registration, deterioration, bad speed conversion duplication and just poor duplication are, in general, artifacts of lazy lab work and poor storage.

 

 

 

Edited by Frank Wylie
grammar
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Yes, you are correct that most silent feature footage was well shot in terms of hand-cranking -- the pulsing artifacts from inconsistent cranking are more visible in modern movies like "Man on Fire" where it was deliberately done for effect by using radical inconsistency in cranking speed. But certainly it was considered an issue in the silent era when doing spilt-screens - Buster Keaton praised Elgin Lessley as a "human metronome" for his ability to do multiple exposure passes for "The Playhouse" and match cranking speed and thus exposure.

I assume when someone is asking about obtaining a "hand-cranked style" they are referring to the use of hand-cranked film cameras in music video work and in movies like "Man on Fire" where it is visually distinctive, rather than the barely distinctive effect in actual silent era movies.  Not much point today in shooting with an actual hand-cranked camera if you are going to execute the cranking so flawlessly that you might as well shoot with a modern camera...

In fact, at the ASC Master Class last month we spent a day with a hand-cranked 35mm camera and deliberately created pulsing and motion artifacts.

 

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On 12/24/2019 at 11:08 AM, Phil Connolly said:

360 degrees means the shutter is open all the time. You can't be more open then fully open. One 1/24 of a sec is the longest you can have on digital camera at 24fps. 

In that case you can only extend the period the shutter is open by reducing the frame rate. at 12 fps with a 360 shutter angle, its open 1/12 of a sec

 

That’s true as far as camera settings go, but you don’t have to play a video back in the same way it was recorded. 

 

If you record with the shutter open all the time (a 360 degree shutter) then on play back you can choose to have any shutter time that is a multiple of the shooting shutter time, even if that comes out to greater than  1/(frame rate)s. Do it by multiplying the frames together.

E.g. you can have a shutter time of 1second while shooting at 25fps with a shutter time of 1/25th second. . 

I did that using blend layers in Premiere but since learned there’s a plug in built into after effects that can do the same thing  

 

 

 

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