Copol 2 Shutters-what happened?

[eric black]

Im curious- Copol makes 0,1, and 3 shutters- what the heck happened to the 2? Was it accidentally skipped?

[Walter Calahan]

I've always had the same question, but never an answer.

[Ole Tjugen]

There never was a Copal 2 shutter. However there was a Compur 2 shutter - or rather three slightly different versions of it. There are also all the old "not 0,1,3,4,or 5" shutters which tend to be lumped into the #2, but that's just a result of shutter sizes not being standardised at that time.

The thread that contains the post in my signture also has the Compur 2 dimensions. :)

[Bruce Watson]

Im curious- Copol makes 0,1, and 3 shutters- what the heck happened to the 2? Was it accidentally skipped?

Years ago I emailed this very question to the Copal people in Japan. I actually got a reply, shocking though that may be. They said, basically, that they had never had enough demand to make a shutter in that size. It's not a technical problem, but a marketplace demand problem.

[Ernest Purdum]

Tooling up to make a shutter is expensive. It's unfortunate that the big #4 and#5 shutters have disappeared, partly because lens makers have had to limit the aperture of some of their longer lenses and drop others entirely. The #2 size is less of a loss because if a lens won't fit into a #1 it can be put into a #3. Having a #2 available would save a little weight, but is not a major factor.