Camera/Lighting for Indoor Swing Practice

[Yossarian]

Hello Everyone, I am moving to a new house and first thought... let's have a room for indoor golf practice!

I know many of you love to record your swings, but indoor there is always the issue of the blurred clubhead at impact due to the poor lighting compared to practicing in the sunlight.

Has anyone figured out a combo of camera and indoor lighting to get good results at 240fps,  720p?

 

[Zeph]

What matters more than high FPS is high shutter speed. What camera or phone do you have to record with? High shutter speed also means a higher requirement of lighting. 

I have an iPhone 14 Pro. If I use the default camera app and 240 FPS, the club and hands are very blurry. If I use a different app where I can record with higher shutter speed, a 60 FPS recording is better than 240 FPS with the default app. The default app prioritize taking in light and the shutter speed is much lower than the camera can do.

For lighting, I'd buy some LED lamps. I tried a cheap 2x20W long LED armature, but that produced flicker when recording. A cheap LED ceiling lamp did not have this issue. If you can test the camera on the lamps before buying, that's ideal.

You don't have to set the camera to the highest shutter speed possible. I can set it higher on mine than I use. At some point going higher won't reveal a whole lot more, but the quality can suffer because you need a lot more light.

Resolution doesn't matter too much. Most of the parts you want to look at are identifiable with lower resolutions.

Edited May 25, 2024 by Zeph

[iacas]

The more light the better, and then in some apps like OnForm, you can change the shutter speed manually.

[Yossarian]

On 5/25/2024 at 5:00 AM, Zeph said:

If I use a different app where I can record with higher shutter speed, a 60 FPS recording is better than 240 FPS with the default app. The default app prioritize taking in light and the shutter speed is much lower than the camera can do.

That's very helpful. I have the same cellphone. What's the app you use to change the shutter speed?

As an alternative I have a decent mirrorless camera (Fuji XS10) where it may be easier to play with the shutter and get better quality, but the playback is not very user friendly, so I would need to find an easy way to stream the recording to another device.

I also looked in to golf simulators forums, they seems to suggest the combo Kinovea sw + a camera like this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GWNB6TN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

[Zeph]

6 minutes ago, Yossarian said:

That's very helpful. I have the same cellphone. What's the app you use to change the shutter speed?

As an alternative I have a decent mirrorless camera (Fuji XS10) where it may be easier to play with the shutter and get better quality, but the playback is not very user friendly, so I would need to find an easy way to stream the recording to another device.

I also looked in to golf simulators forums, they seems to suggest the combo Kinovea sw + a camera like this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GWNB6TN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you got an iPhone 14 Pro I wouldn't buy a new camera. You can see an example of my recordings in my swing topic.

There are probably lots of apps that can work. I first bought the ProCamera 8 app, where I can manually control everything. Works pretty well and some nice editing options, but you can't draw on the videos. I then found the OnForm app which I like better for golf. On the free version you got a limited number of videos you can have stored on the app, but you can download them to the phone and then remove them from the app to record new ones. The FPS is also limited to 120 FPS, which is fine. If you pay $5 you get the full version. This app can auto-record single swings, which is very nice, plus you can draw on it, sync videos etc. It's the one I use now. You can do a lot on just the phone.

If I upload anything to PC, I like the Kinovea program.