BEST slow motion on *European* GH3: film at 50p or 40% speed?

[Luc Spencer]

Hey guys! Some of you might have seen me here before, I'm an event guy, been doing weddings and other events for about 3 years now. So I decided to try something different. I found a girl willing to shed a few clothes and trust that I can make her look stunning on film. No, it's not porn, it's one of those "artistic" and semi-erotic clips. With the emphasis on semi.

Here's my problem: I've seen plenty other videos like this before, and slow motion is very common. The method most people use since none of the people I talked to had a GH3, was to film at 720/60p and interpret at 24p. Now, I'm stuck in eastern Europe, so I only have 50p. This is how I film at weddings to get smooth slow motion when I want to use it.

There is, however, the 40% speed setting in the camera's menu. I did test that as well and it still has smooth motion. But... HOW? 50p x 0.4 = 20p. Unless... unless it KNOWS to shoot at 60p and convert it to 24p, which would be exactly 40%.

In 2 hours I'm about to go get the girl and take her to the hair and make-up salon, so if anyone can shed some light on this until we start filming in a about 5-6 hours, perfect, if not, I will shoot at 50p and be happy with just 50% slow motion. Besides, you get 50mbps that way instead of 24. I will be shooting in very low light so that might help quite a bit as well.

Thanks guys!

PS: when I'm in 40% speed mode, the shutter speed won't go below 1/60. I'm guessing that's a hint :D

[Bo Skelmose]

Just use the 50p standard setting and slowmo in post or even the 60p to get more slowmo!

[Luc Spencer]

Well, here is the result:

Teodora [beta] - YouTube

When she poured the wine into the glass I used the 40% speed from the camera menu, everything else was shot in MOV 50p. It says beta in the title because the footage hasn't been touched, it's straight from the camera. I shot it using the Natural profile with everything set to -5 (contrast, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction).

I am very pleased with the result, overall. I used 3 lenses, Panny 14mm f/2.5, Panny Leica 25mm f/1.4 and Oly 45mm f/1.8. Noise is more noticeable with the first one, and I'm still annoyed with Panasonic that they only released the 15mm f/1.7 a few months ago. Would have produced much better results.

[Vincent Oliver]

Interesting video, still trying to work out why she would want all those tattoos.