Off Speed

Most film cameras and some video cameras can be set to shoot "off speed". Normally, you'll be shooting at a "sync speed" of 25 frames per second (for PAL television production). But, for example, you may be filming an athlete running and you want your film to playback in slow motion so you would set the camera's frame rate to something higher than 25 fps. Setting it to 50 fps means that when it is played back at 25 fps, the event will appear at half speed. The higher your recording frame rate, the slower the playback will be. Conversly, if you set a lower frame rate such as 4 fps, then the event will be speeded up on playback. This is known as time lapse and is frequently used for slow moving events such as clouds passing. Some video cameras refer to time lapse as "interval recording".

There are now a number of video cameras which can shoot off speed such as the Panasonic Varicam and the Phantom HD