How to Adjust a Camera for Slow Motion
When you're trying to give your video project panache, slow motion can add a touch of the surreal. But you may have noticed that trying to slow down footage in postproduction doesn't have the same feel. For that reason, set up the camera to achieve a realistic slow-motion effect.
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Instructions
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Start your camera and enter the Settings menu.
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Locate the controls for frames per second, or FPS.
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Reset the FPS to a higher rate. The higher the FPS, the slower the image will appear.
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Shoot your scene with the new FPS setting. The result should be varying degrees of slow motion, depending on the FPS setting you used.
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Tips & Warnings
Shooting at 120fps will produce only a reduction to one-quarter of the original video's speed. This makes it ideal in situations where you want the action to move a little slowly.
Shooting at 300fps is good for dramatic slowdown to create an effect with greater impact.
Shooting at 600fps will produce an intensely slow video where otherwise high-speed human motions can be analyzed and displayed in great detail.
Generally, no camera available to consumers can shoot at a faster speed than 1,200fps. At this speed, human movements will slow to a crawl.
When shooting in slow motion, shoot in a well-lit area. Using a high FPS reduces the amount of time light has to enter the frame, producing progressively darker images the higher you set the FPS.
Not all cameras are equipped with FPS control settings. If your camera doesn't support this feature, you'll be limited to postproduction slow motion, which tends to lack the smoothness of camera-based slow motion.
Slow-motion video has no sound. You'll have to compensate by adding to the sound track during editing in postproduction.
Shooting in slow motion also requires more footage, as a clip lasting 6 seconds can run upwards of a full minute at 300fps, and even longer at higher frame rates This means you will use up your storage space on your camera much more quickly using slow motion.
As you shoot at higher FPS rates, the footage will be wider, slimmer and in a lower resolution. Take this into consideration during your production.
References
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