Originally posted by future_retro Can someone please elaborate on this? I just got a handycam and it [shockingly, for sony] has shutter priority mode
I'm a total video beginner and while I didn't plan on extensively learning the in's and out's like I did with dslr's, this concept really intrigues me, even though I'm not very concerned with the "film look" for my quick-and-dirty snowboard videos
Sorry I just saw this today, i'll try and expand on this a little for you.
Standard video (PAL or NTSC) is usually 60i or 50i. This means the screen is refreshed 50/60 times every second. With film, and with most DSLR's, the frame rate is 24p so there is less than half as many sampled moments of time per second. When there are more sampled moments, there is less gaps in between movements, so you don't need to blur your images to fill those gaps in the movement.
Here's a very basic visual representation. The dots/dashes below represent how a moving object (eg a tennis ball) would appear as it travels across the screen in different frame rates:
60i (fast shutter) .......................................
24p (slow shutter) ---------------------------
24p (fast shutter) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
With a fast shutter and slower refresh rate, you can see that the object would appear to jump across the screen.
Slowing the shutter down introduces blur, so the object (eg the tennis ball) no longer appears sharp in still images (it should be a circle but now it's a line!) But it gives a much more accurate portayal of where and how that ball is travelling.
With the 60i, even though it is using the same fast shutter speed as the 'jumpy' 24p, it still accurately tracks the motion of the ball because it samples more data.