Panning with an A7Sii

[Awdbugga61]

Hi all,

I'm a newbie to the forum and a newbie to video. I have bought a Sony A7Sii; which I use for a new business venture videoing properties.

 

I mainly use sliders but occasionally pan. It's the panning I'm having problems with. Some pans can be almost 180 degrees. Almost all the pans I have done are slightly jerky when viewed back. I use a manfrotto fluid head on a sturdy tripod, so the equipment is not the issue.

 

I'm in the UK, so I'm using 25 fps and a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second. My lens is a Sony/Zeiss 16-35mm lens set to 16mm.

 

I've read on the web that a pan should take 23 seconds, to scan 90 degrees. That would mean a 40 second plus scan for anything approaching 180 degrees. Even for a 90 degree pan, a clip of 23 seconds is far too long to be usable in a property video. People would get bored or even lose the will to live. Through research I've found that the general rule of thumb with clips in property videos is they should not be any longer than 5 seconds.

 

How can I get round the issue of trying to squeeze a very slow pan that takes 20+ seconds into a clip of only 5 seconds? Or am I just going to have to accept that pans will be slightly juddery.

 

Could I increase the frame rate to say 60 and the shutter speed to 1/120th when panning very slowly and then speed the video up in post production? Or will that change in frame rate in itself introduce juddering. I render at 25fps mp4 (PAL).

 

I use Power Director 14 Ultimate Suite for video editing; which I know is not as good as Adobe Premier, but does have a function to adjust the speed of a clip.

 

Any advice would be most welcome. As I say, I'm new to video.

 

thanks in advance.

John

[Ben]

Hi and welcome to the forum,

 

what do you mean with "slightly yerky" and "juddery"? It sounds like you are describing rolling shutter, that is vertical lines appear leaning or bending into the direction of the pan.

 

If so, taking the shot very slowly and speeding it up in post will help. Changing the frame rate of the recording won't help because the rolling shutter effect is a property of the sensor readout process and it's serialization that stays almost the same at every exposure duration. Apart from that only a wider focal length can mitigate this effect.

 

Hope that helps

 

Ben

[tapil523]

How bout instead of a complete pan you just turn a short amount, then do a fade or a cut - walk over to a new angle, continue a new short pan?