What's the right shutter speed for Action 4 when filming…?

Drone Photography & Videography Forum
1

Hey folks, I’ve been watching a ton of videos on YouTube about the best settings for the Osmo Action 4, but I’m still confused about the shutter speed.

A lot of people say to set your shutter speed to double your frame rate. So if I’m filming in 30fps, it should be 1/60. But then others suggest going with a faster speed like 1/240.

Could someone break it down for me in simple terms? What’s the best shutter speed to use when shooting 4K 30fps depending on where I am — like indoors, hiking outside, or recording from inside a car?

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Honestly, if you’re asking this, you might just want to stick with auto settings for now. That’ll give you solid footage with decent lighting for most of the situations you mentioned.

The rule about using double the frame rate for shutter speed does work — but only if you’ve got ND filters to cut down the light when you’re outside. Otherwise, your video will be super overexposed. That setup gives you motion blur, but on an action cam it can cause weird jitter because of the image stabilization. Personally, I think it just looks bad.

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@Zach
I tried filming inside my house with everything on auto and the footage looked pretty rough — kind of grainy and not very clear. I might test it again using standard dewarp mode to see if that helps.

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@Ash
Yeah, indoor footage is tough on action cams. The sensors are really small, so the video usually turns out kind of noisy or soft.

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Zach said:
@Ash
Yeah, indoor footage is tough on action cams. The sensors are really small, so the video usually turns out kind of noisy or soft.

Got any suggestions for better indoor settings? I’ll mostly be filming outdoors, but I still want the indoor stuff to look somewhat similar.

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@Ash
Best thing is to make sure the room is well-lit. Check if the Action 4 has a night mode or low-light mode — turning that on might make a difference indoors.

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Zach said:
@Ash
Best thing is to make sure the room is well-lit. Check if the Action 4 has a night mode or low-light mode — turning that on might make a difference indoors.

Would cranking up the ISO help or just make it worse?

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@Ash
Turning ISO up actually makes things worse. That’s what causes the grainy look. Try to keep ISO low and just use more light if you can.

9

If you’re using RockSteady (the digital stabilization), you’ll want to go with 1/200 shutter speed or higher so it works properly. The whole double-the-fps rule is more for that smooth, cinematic blur — but it doesn’t work well with stabilization. So it’s up to you to decide what’s more important.

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@Keaton
That really clears things up, thanks. So if I want my indoor footage to look clean and sharp, I guess I should turn off wide mode and RockSteady too.