Blurry motion advice

[Faust57]

Using an old Panny nv-gs27 to record a horse cantering. I firewire to PC and use Adobe Premier 2 for editing. What I am interested in is freeze frame viewing so I can spot when the hoof strikes the ground and then make a note of the time and frame number, then move forward to see when the same foot strikes the ground again, take note of the time and frame number. I then know how long each stride takes. The images I currently get show two legs, so I can't tell in what frame the hoof went down due to the blurring. I have been searching the forum, and it appears that fast shutter speed is needed. Would a faster frame rate above 25fps be of value. What camcorder would be best for this application.
Many thanks.

[A n d r e w]

Frame rate and shutter speed are (relatively) independent of each other. Frame rate is a fixed variable (in the case of standard definition PAL camcorders, it's 25 frames per second; 30 frames per second for NTSC).

Shutter speed, however, is an independent variable. For recording movement, in situations where it is important that there is as little blurring due to movement as possible, shutter speeds of 1/250 or higher are a good idea. Of course, a fast shutter requires plenty of light. But if you're shooting outdoors, you should be able to get as high as 1/250 if you open the iris right up.

I suppose this all depends on what degree of manual control you have on your camera, that is, whether you can adjust shutter speed and iris yourself. You'd have to check your instruction manual.

Andrew.

[Faust57]

Thanks, my camera can't adjust anything. I'll look at that as a feature on current camera's, my friend has the Sony HDR-SR8E and the manual doesn't mention manual adjustment.

[redsox_mark]

The NV-GS27 has manual shutter speed adjustment.
See page 30 of the manual.

[Faust57]

Thanks for the info. Would a progressive recording camera also help?

[redsox_mark]

For frame grabs - yes, progressive helps; no interlacing issues.