The GoPro Hero 9 Black is packed with some great new and updated features. It can film amazing slow motion videos with top-notch clarity at high resolutions.

Slow motion videos (as the name suggests) refers to the footage captured at a high frame rate (60fps, 120fps, 240fps). Slow motion shots often look more cinematic because it helps to highlight important actions and details in the film. Such videos are extremely appealing to the eye, especially on fast action scenes.

In this article, you’ll learn all about recommended settings for capturing quality slow motion shots with the GoPro Hero 9 Black.

GoPro Hero 9: Slow Motion

To capture slow motion footage, your GoPro video should be set to shoot at a higher frame rate setting (preferably higher than 60 frames per second). The Hero 9 Black can shoot 5K videos at 30fps max. Therefore, you won’t get 5K slow motion shots with this camera.

However, even 4K shots look pretty good when it comes to clarity. The GoPro Hero 9 is capable of shooting 4K videos at 60fps. So, you can get some great 4K slow motion shots (50% speed) with this camera. And, if you want 1080p HD videos, the GoPro Hero 9 Black provides frame rates as high as 240fps (1/8 the speed).

However, for playing-back the video recorded by Hero 9 in slow motion, you need an editor which allows you to reduce the playback speed of your videos. Most of the video editors available today can do that. On the new GoPro Quik app you can edit the speed of your clips quite easily.

Slow Motion Settings for GoPro Hero 9

Slow motion videos can be achieved by increasing the frame rate settings on GoPro Hero 9. However, some of the highest FPS settings are locked at higher resolutions. GoPro Settings like frame rate, resolution and shutter speed are dependent to one another.

Now let’s have a look how these three settings can affect your slow motion.

Frame Rate

This is the most important setting that you need to look at while recording slow motion videos. The higher the frame rate of your shots, the more you can slow down the video.

The industry standard frame rate of videos today is 30fps owing to the fact that it’s quite close to how the human eye perceives a fluid motion.

Now, if you increase the frame rate to, say 60fps, you’ll be able to slow the footage down by up to 2x (to achieve 30fps) and you’ll still get a great-looking shot at half the original speed. Similarly, footage recorded at 120fps can be slowed down by up to 4x. If you want super-slow motion footage, the speed of which is reduced by as much as up to 8x, go for 240fps.

Resolution

For quality slow motion shots, the footage must be recorded at a high resolution. You must set the resolution of your GoPro Hero 9 Black to at least 1080p HD resolution for achieving impressive slow motion footage.

With the GoPro Hero 9 Black, you can increase the playback length of videos shot at 4K60 to 2x, which means reducing its speed to half. Even 2.7K or 1440p resolutions provide pretty decent results and you can achieve footage at one-fourth the speed. At 1080p, you can even super-slow motion footage with speeds reduced by as much as one-eighth of the original footage.

Here’s the rundown of frame rates provided by GoPro Hero 9 Black at different resolutions:

  • 5K: 30, 24 fps
  • 4K: 60, 30, 24 fps
  • 2.7K: 120, 60, 30, 24 fps
  • 1440p: 120, 60, 30, 24 fps
  • 1080p: 240, 120, 60, 30, 24 fps

Shutter Speed (Light)

As I’ve mentioned before, choosing high frame rates means that you can achieve better shots at slow motion. But, there’s one problem with setting the frame rates too high. Higher frame rates mean that your camera’s shutter will be opened for a shorter period of time. As a result of this, less light enters the sensor of the camera making the footage darker and grainy-looking.

So, it’s advisable that you don’t exaggerate with increasing the frame rates in low-light scenarios because it may compromise on footage quality.

Recommended Slow Motion Settings for Different Activities

Here are the settings I recommend for shooting different activities with the GoPro Hero 9 Black:

  • For Fast action activities like surfing, rafting or skiing in broad daylight, choose 1080p/240 fps for best quality slow motion shots of your action.
  • For Slow Motion shots of activities like biking, motorcycling and driving, 1080p/120 fps would provide a great slow-mo footage.
  • If you’re shooting in low light but still want high quality slow motion shots, go for 4K/60fps to avoid the graininess or noise in the resulting footage.

1080p @ 240 fps

Editing: How to Create Slow Motion Videos?

So far we discussed how to shoot slow motion footage. Now, let’s talk about how to edit slow motion clips on your desired speed.

Actually, it’s quite simple to edit GoPro videos shot at high frame rates. On most video editors, you just need to adjust the video clip’s speed according to your preference.

You can achieve this by using the GoPro Quik App. 

When you slow down a clip, the footage will become longer, or in other words, it will be played back at a slower rate giving you a slow motion effect.

Save the footage with your desired speed, and you’re done.

Final Words

To sum up, slow motion videos look great to capture fast action scenes. However, you should keep in mind a couple of important things to achieve good quality slow motion videos with your Hero 9.

Here are those things:

  • If you’re low on space, go for the minimum 1080/60fps setting. You’ll still get pretty decent looking footage, and you won’t run out of space quickly.
  • When shooting slow-motion videos, make sure that the lighting is good, so that you don’t end up with dark and noisy-looking videos.

I hope that this tutorial will help you create some cinematic memories in slow motion with the GoPro Hero 9 Black!

 

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