I have a few video cameras and they do not have any EXIF or metadata that can tell me the electronic shutter speed when in use. I want to use the one with the fastest shutter speed that produces a good picture under comparable lighting conditions. I can set them up to look at a scene, record them, and then examine the resulting 30 frames per second video.
What’s a practical way to compare their shutter speeds? Maybe have them look at a table fan with a red dot on one blade to see which camera blurs the red dot the least? Shoot an Airsoft pellet through the field of view and look for blur? Is there some common or easy way to have the cameras look at a row of lights or LEDs that light sequentially at high speed?
I’m guessing that the effective electronic shutter speeds are likely to be between 1/50 and 1/500 of a second, but who knows? It would be great to know the exact speed, but that’s secondary. Right now, I just want to be able to say, “This camera will, under identical lighting, blur fast-moving moving objects the least.”
(Cheap, fast, and simple methods are preferred. If there’s some type of LED timing device I can purchase cheaply or build out of a few bucks of parts, I’d consider it.)
What kind of cameras do you have? All my digital cameras allow me to set the recording speed in the settings, in fps. Usually you have a choice of 24, 30, and 60 fps at least. Or are you trying to prove that the recorded video is actually in those selected shutter speeds?
I don’t know a lot about digital video cameras – do they have physical shutters at all?
If the video camera has manual settings, then you can also base it off the minimum exposure time allowed.
The easiest way for a layperson to assess this is to take a video of a physical metronome (or other pendulum) and look for blur or other artifacts. You can adjust the speed as needed. You can also use a toy or knickknack that spins (like a toy merry-go-round).
With the digital camera model numbers, you might be able to google and find the camera sensor specs. This is a little less precise because the device might not fully support the sensor specs.
To make it a bit clearer, I have a friend who has some issues with people on his land. I offered to lend him a video camera (could be analog or IP…I’ve got plenty of both) and some sort of DVR so he could have a video record. Obviously, being able to capture a license plate on a moving vehicle would be nice.
But, in looking at the spec sheets for the cameras, I realize I have no way of ascertaining which camera would be best (i.e., have the shortest effective shutter speed) for the job. I could go out, set up one, try it out, set up another, try it out, etc. It may be that NONE of them will do the job, but I’d like to at least make the best choice I can with what I have. Or, it may be that ANY of them will work fine. I just don’t know.
(An analog camera would be cheapest and easiest, but it would also have the least ability to configure settings.)
It will likely be during the day, since he is away from home working. But I was thinking I would try to compare shutter speeds under a few different lighting conditions. It’s easy for me to set a camera up at home, capture a few seconds on my laptop, and compare performance. These are not expensive cameras. It’s always possible the camera will be spotted and stolen. Who knows?
I think your RLProblem will be the underlying firmware “messing” with your shutterspeeds at will, to get the best results.
IMHO, you’d need a cam. that you can control in full manual mode and set to shutterspeed-priority… everything else will be futile, as the firmware of any given camera might find its time to prioritize f-value and subsequently change shutterspeed as a consequence.
and as mentioned above, I also think that modern cam’s dont have shutters anymore … and this was mostly the reason why DSL photo cam’s could venture into the film-camara eco-system with huge success, some 10 - 15 years ago.
I think you’re giving too much credit to these cameras. Most are analog (NTSC) cameras with “electronic shutters” and fixed aperture lenses. Again, inexpensive cameras, like the kind that small shops buy on Amazon (“4 cameras and a DVR for $545.67!!”).
Putting an IP camera out there is a bit more complex and risky. We could buy a trail camera or something, but we don’t really want to put any money into the situation.
At this point, it’s as much an intellectual as a practical problem. And there are devices ($$$) that will actually allow you to figure out the shutter speed…we just don’t have one and certainly don’t want to buy one.