How the FS-700 shoots slow motion.

Using Sony’s new NEX-FS700 to shoot slow motion is simplicity itself. To enter the slow mode button you simply press a switch marked S&Q on the left side of the camera. First press of the button puts the camera into S&Q motion where it will shoot full resolution HD at up to 60fps. In this mode you just shoot as you would normally, only now at a higher speed than normal. Press the S&Q button again and the camera enters super slow motion mode.
In supper slow mo the FS-700 will shoot at 120fps or 240fps at full 1920×1080 resolution. You can also shoot at 480fps and 960fps at reduced, but still very useable resolutions. When shooting at 120fps you are limited to a recording burst of 16 seconds and at 240fps the burst period is 8 seconds.
There are two ways to trigger the recording burst. You can trigger recording immediately after the press of the record button or you can set the camera to record the burst period prior to pressing the record button. If using the trigger at start mode, on pressing the record button a message saying “buffering” appears in the viewfinder. After 8 (or 16 secs) the camera starts to write the recording to the SD card (or FMU) and you see a slightly slowed preview of the recording (roughly half speed) of what you have just shot. So this takes about 2x the record time, roughly 16 seconds, to write the file and during this period you cannot shoot anything else. Pressing the record button during the write process, stops it at that point, keeping the written file to that point and the camera goes back to standby ready to record another shot.
In trigger at end mode, you point the camera at the scene you want to capture and shortly after the thing you want to record happens you press the record button and the camera then starts to write the previous 8(16) seconds to the SD card, again you see half speed(approx) playback of the clip as it is written to the card.

The fact that you can’t shoot anything else during the write process is a little frustrating, but it’s a small price to pay for the ability to shoot at 240fps, although it does mean you can’t really use the FS-700 to shoot long duration events without gaps in super slow mo. The great thing is that as all the processing is done in the camera playback of the clips is no different to playing any other AVCHD clip. 8 seconds at 240fps results in an 80 second clip at 24fps. I could have really done with the trigger at end mode on a recent shoot I was doing with Red Epics where we were shooting pyrotechnic and special effects events that often took some time to trigger, but only lasted fractions of a couple of seconds. With the Epic’s we often ended up with several minutes of footage prior to the action we wanted, wasting storage space and making more footage for the editor to go through.

I really enjoyed using the FS-700, my guess is that slow motion is about to become the new time-lapse.

20 thoughts on “How the FS-700 shoots slow motion.”

  1. Thank you for the information. I just got the fs700 last week and I am wondering how to get the exposure right when you go to slow motion. The camera needs a lot more light to record slow mo. If I set the exposure correctly for regular 1080 30 @ 60fps that is fine for non slow mo, but then it is very dark for slow mo. If I over expose before I set the slow mo then it is better, but it takes several trys to get the exposure correct for the slow motion. Any thoughts?

    Thanks you….Kevin Milne

    1. You should be setting you exposure for slow mo while in slow mo mode. Treat it just the same as any normal shooting mode and expose accordingly while in super slow mo mode.

    2. just set the shutter speed to be the same as the super slo-mo shutters speed then you will be seeing the same exposure for both

      1. But the look will be different when played back. 24fps with a 1/240 shutter will have slightly juddery motion while 240fps with no shutter will look fluid and smooth when played back at 24fps.

  2. AVCHD footage format mts, how we can use it in which edit tool can we use it on FCP? and how when i convert mts 2gb to move through log and transfer. it covers 12 gb.. so how and where we can edit our footage plz reply thanks

    1. FCP up to version 7 is not the best for handling AVCHD. It cannot handle AVCHD natively, so Log and Transfer converts it to ProRes which does make the files much bigger. FCP-X can handle AVCHD without conversion as can Adobe Premier CS6.

      1. thank you so much buddy and what about proxy render line appear in Adobe Premier CS5 and shows jurks ? is it also problem of version? plus my buddy told me that only Sony Vegas can handle it.. what do you say further? thanks

        1. AVCHD requires a lot of processing power to decode it. That’s why FCP 7 transcodes it to ProRes first. Whatever software you use you will need a good, up to date computer with a suitable graphics card to edit it smoothly. Start doing a lot of effects and even a high end machine will start to bog down with AVCHD. CS6 is significantly better at handling AVCHD than CS5, but only if the computer has the processing power to deal with it. Vegas is very good with AVCHD, but again it will depend on the computer.

  3. i want to know how to record super slow motion while i have record a normal shot without stop the cam and switch to super slow motion like this

    videos/71005076

    when car caming in normal and after that at slow motion

    1. You can do this by shooting the entire shot in slow motion and then you just speed up the part of the shot where you want normal speed in post production. It’s easy to do.

  4. I just got a FS700. Great! But i am having a hard time with the extremely long render times in premiere. Do you have any advice regarding post production work flow?
    Thanks!!

    1. Get the best NVIDIA graphics card you can afford. Premiere will use the graphics card to do the video processing. However H264 is still processor (CPU) intensive compared to many other codecs.

  5. Looking into doing slow motion video booths at events. I had some questions about a few concerns posted online.

    Question 1:
    8 seconds are enough for me, however, wouldn’t I be able to record longer than 8 seconds in full HD if I have a fast card and an external recorder such as the ninja?
    Question 2:
    When you do in camera playback on footage shot in 240fps will it be slowed down on set for people to see what the slow motion effect looks like?
    Question 3:
    I’ve had extreme problems, for some unknown reason, converting AVCHD files on my pc. Any conversion program I’ve tried, even editing software doesn’t recognize the files at all. Any advice on best programs to use to recognize these files? OR with the ninja external recorder (or other brands, because I’m open to suggestions) can it record as an apple pro res proxy instead of those silly AVCHDs?
    Thank you so much for your help!

    1. The 8 second limitation is due to the need to use an internal memory buffer.

      Don’t know why you are having problems with AVCHD. Most modern software and computers can deal with AVCHD and the AVCHD from the FS700 is really good.

  6. “The 8 second limitation is due to the need to use an internal memory buffer.”
    Does this mean with an external recorder, I won’t have the 8 second limitation?

  7. Hi!
    I just have the FS700R and Im having a sign when i want to set up the super slow motion, said connect the FMU, do I need a FMU to record in slow motion?
    Thanks.

    1. No you don’t need the FMU but you probably have recording set so that if the FMU is present files would be recorded to it. You want to set the camera to only record to the SD card.

    1. 240 frames per second for 8 seconds = 240 x 8 = 1920 frames.

      Play back 1920 frames at 24 frames per second = 1920/24 = 80 seconds.

      OR Shoot at 240, play back at 24 = 240/24 = 10 so the motion is slowed down 10 times. 8 seconds x 10 = 80 seconds.

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