How to film your golf swing for analysis

Updated 6 October 2026

Three things decide how much a swing video can tell you: where the camera stands, how many frames a second it records, and whether it can hear the strike. Get those right and almost any recent iPhone is enough. Get them wrong and no software can put back what the footage never caught.

This guide is written for Swing Analyzer, but nearly all of it applies to any swing analysis app, or to a coach reviewing your video.

Put the camera on a tripod

Handheld footage moves with your hands, and every line drawn over the picture — the shoulder line, the spine angle, the circle round your head — moves with it. A swing filmed handheld cannot be measured, only watched.

A cheap phone tripod or a clamp on the bay's frame is enough. What matters is that it does not move from the first swing of the session to the last, so every swing is measured from the same place.

Down the line or face on

There are two standard camera angles. Pick one per session and keep it, because swings can only be compared with swings filmed from the same angle.

Down the line

Behind you, looking towards the target, at about the height of your hands.

Line the camera up on the line through your toes, not the line from the ball to the target. A camera on the ball-to-target line sits slightly outside your stance and makes the club look laid off at the top and across the line when it is not.

Down the line shows the plane of the swing and how your body moves towards or away from the ball. It is the angle for:

• over the top, and a club across the line or laid off at the top
• early extension: hips moving towards the ball through impact
• in a simulator bay, usually the screen as well, which matters for reading the launch monitor's numbers

Face on

In front of you, square to your chest, at about waist height.

Face on shows weight and movement along the target line. It is the angle for:

• sway away from the target in the backswing, and slide towards it in the downswing
• a reverse pivot
• where the hands and the club shaft are at impact

Some faults show from either angle: standing up through impact, casting, a chicken wing, an arms-only backswing, and an unbalanced finish.

Tell the app which angle you used. Swing Analyzer chooses its guide lines and the faults its coaching looks for by the angle, and only compares a swing against reference swings filmed the same way. It can guess down the line from how narrow your shoulders look, but it cannot recognise face on, so set the angle when you import or tag the session.

Record at 1080p and 120 frames a second

A golf club travels far enough through impact that ordinary video misses most of it. At 100 mph the club head covers about five feet between one frame and the next at 30 frames a second, and about a foot at 120.

• 1080p at 120fps is the recommended setting. It is high enough to see the club through impact and to measure tempo precisely, and sharp enough to read a simulator screen.
• 240fps works too, and is better for the moment of impact, but the picture is smaller and a simulator screen is harder to read. iPhones record it at 239.76 frames a second, and the app keeps that exact rate rather than rounding it, so tempo comes out right.
• 4K at 60fps reads the screen well, but the club moves too far between frames to see impact clearly.

Below 100 frames a second, Swing Analyzer will still analyse the swing, but it says so in the session summary, and tempo carries a wider margin.

Use regular video, not Slo-Mo

If your phone's normal Video mode offers 120fps, use it. On an iPhone the choices are in Settings → Camera → Record Video, and which rates appear depends on the model. Avoid Slo-Mo: it records at a high rate, but sharing or exporting a Slo-Mo clip can flatten it to 30fps and throw the extra frames away.

Start recording about a second before you settle over the ball. The camera needs that long to reach its full frame rate.

Keep the whole swing in the frame

The app measures your swing from your body's position in each frame, so your whole body has to be visible from address to finish:

• Feet in shot. Ankles cut off at the bottom of the frame lose the base that posture and balance are measured from.
• Room above your head. At the top of the backswing and in the finish, the club goes well above your head. Leave roughly your own height of space above you, or the club leaves the frame exactly when it matters.
• Not too far away. You should fill a good part of the frame's height. Too small and the joints are hard to place.
• Light the bay. Body tracking struggles in dim light. If the golfer is found in fewer than 9 frames out of 10, the swing is still measured, but loosely, and the app tells you so.

Use the main (1×) lens. The ultra-wide lens fits more in, but it shrinks everything, which matters most for the simulator screen.

Leave the sound on

Swing Analyzer finds each swing in a long recording by the sound of the club striking the ball, then cuts it out: a second and a half before impact and a second after. That means you can record a whole session in one go and let the app split it, instead of starting and stopping for every shot.

For that to work:

• Record with sound. A video without a sound track has no strike to find. The app offers the whole clip as one swing, and you trim it by hand.
• Keep the phone away from the mat. A strike has to be far louder than the background to count, and the phone should hear the ball, not your club grounding behind it.
• Practice swings are fine. A practice swing that brushes the mat sounds duller than a strike, and the app sets it aside rather than treating it as a shot.

A swing with no strike the app could hear loses its impact marker, its tempo and its shot data together, so sound matters more than it seems.

In a simulator bay: get the screen in shot

If the launch monitor's numbers are visible in the video, Swing Analyzer reads them off the screen and attaches them to the swing, so carry, ball speed and the rest sit next to the swing that produced them.

• Keep the screen in the frame, using the 1× lens. Down the line usually manages this without any effort.
• The digits need to be big enough. From about 20 pixels tall the whole panel reads; under 12 pixels the digits are not in the file to recover. Move closer if the app says the panel is too small.
• Mark the bay's layout once. The first time you use a bay, you show the app where each number sits on the screen.
• Take your time between shots. The numbers are read while you set up for the next swing, once the simulator has finished counting up, which takes about 12 seconds. Hit again sooner than that, or leave more than a couple of minutes, and the panel can't be matched to the right swing. Hold your address for a second before you start the next swing.
• The last shot of a session has no following set-up to read the screen from. Type its numbers in, or keep the original recording alongside your library.

What the video cannot tell you

Some things are out of reach whatever the footage, and it is better to know before you rely on them:

• The club itself is not tracked yet. The body is, but the positions defined by the club — P2, P6 and P8, where the shaft is parallel to the ground — are not found automatically.
• Club-head speed is not measured from video. Use a launch monitor's figure.
• One angle at a time. A down-the-line video says little about sway, and a face-on one says little about the swing plane. If both matter to you, film both, in separate sessions.

A quick checklist

1. Phone on a tripod, 1× lens, regular video at 1080p and 120fps.
2. Down the line on your toe line at hand height, or face on square to your chest at waist height. Tell the app which.
3. Whole body in shot, with room for the club above your head.
4. Sound on, phone clear of the mat.
5. In a bay, the screen in shot and big enough to read.
6. Start recording a second before you set up, and record the whole session.