Best shutter speed opinions?

[John Cambell]

Im shooting fast moving action with my A1 outdoors with bright light (surfing). From what I know, the faster the shutter speed lets in less light and has less blur for fast moving objects, but also once you get to a certain point then you loose picture, color, and image quality. I was wondering what your guys opinions were for outside fast action shooting?

[Don Palomaki]

What frame rate? Are you planning on capturing stills from the video? Slo-mo? Will you be viewing it on on HD or SD sets? Is there any specific visual effect you are trying to achieve such as depth of field management? What exposure is optimum for the scene? Answers to these any your taste will determine the best speed to use.

In general, the slight motion blur in each frame that you get at slower shutter speeds (e.g., 1/60) yields a somewhat smoother look to motion. Experiment to see what works best for you.

[Khoi Pham]

Go as high as you could and be sure that your exposure is still good, if you don't know how to set your exposure manualy, then put it on Tv, pick a shutter like 1/1000th or 1/2000th, ND to off and the camera will do the rest, when you are on Tv the camera will use apperture, gain to compensate for the shutter speed that you pick, so be sure to set the gain on manual no higher than 0db, use your zebra to check just in case the shutter is too high and the camera can not compensate for it.
Now that I read your post again, you are actually not shooting fast motion, fast motion is something like a golf swing, boxing..., (the golf swing moves fast within the frame),surfing is not fast motion because you are always following the surfer, even though the surfer is moving fast, you are following him and keeping him within your frame and so he is not moving fast within the frame at all, if that is how you shoot, I would put the camera on Av and use F4.0 or F5.6, and use ND filter and let the camera do the rest, at this apperture, it will gives a sharpest picture for A1.

[John Cambell]

Yes, I know how to do everything manually, I was just trying to find out the point where your shutter speed is to fast so that you start to loose quality, so what is the highest shutter speed that I should go up to would be? I would use the highest shutter speed I could use as long as my footage was exposed enough and had enough light, but isnt there a point where if you have to fast of shutter speed you loose quality?

[Dennis Murphy]

Originally Posted by John Cambell

I would use the highest shutter speed I could use as long as my footage was exposed enough and had enough light, but isnt there a point where if you have to fast of shutter speed you loose quality?

You have to remember that a fast shutter speed has a stroby unnatural look to it as well. If that's what you're going for, fine... but I think for something like surfing, you wouldn't want to be going over 1/250th in my opinion.
Surfing is about fliud motion (no pun intended), and a high shutter speed will take the smoothness out of that.

And remember, if you're going to do slow-mo, remember to shoot interlaced.