Dan's method is my favorite, and you can do 'test strip' shots with sheet film, although you will have to use a few sheets.
I recently gave up trying to tune a Graflex FP shutter. At one point I tried to measure speeds relative to each other (as in stop-to-stop) by illuminating from the ground glass plane and measuring duration from in front of the lens. Quite clever, I thought, but consistent curtain travel speed was the devil. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to fix it.
That is why I "spot checked" mine. Took a few pics on E-6 at the various tension settings and compared. My assumption: if E-6 exposed good enough then the shutter speeds were good enough. And also assuming that the greatest source of variability will be the shutter curtain spring.
Dan, thanks again for the word about the Adapt-a-roll. My first LF camera, back in about 1977, was a similar 3x4 Graphic. I looked for a rollfilm back for it then, without success- of course knowledge, and obscure/obsolete photo hardware, were harder to find pre-internet. But I intend to use sheet film with this camera, unless one of those unicorns falls into my lap.
Audacity is my go-to free recording software. Free as in speech, as well as free as in beer
Because of how Focal Plane shutters work, and the fact that Audacity is a sound recording tool. The sound they make is during their whole travel, but the actual exposure time is determined not just by the spring tension that controls the actual speed of the curtain, but the slit width. It would be at best difficult, and at most impossible, to correlate the time it takes the curtain to start and complete its movement to actual exposure times. That, and the sound occurs before a visible slit shows, and stops after it disappears, so correlating the sound to an actual shutter speed is very difficult by this method.
The DSLR method mentioned above is how I would do it, if I could be bothered. My Graflex is "Close Enough" and produces good images at all shutter speeds. that's all I need from it.
Please, call me Erik.
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Omega View 45F Monorail, Super Graphic, Various Lenses (75, 90, 135, 150/265, 210)
If you have some 3x4 sheet film holders you can cut some x-ray film and use it. The stuff is much cheaper than that wonderful Ilford stuff. I'm down to my last box of Efke which I had in the freezer. I have one box of Ilford FP4+ and then it will have to be xray film.. I also have a few Graflex SLR's, but they use a different back. I have roll film holders for them, but prefer to use the sheet film.
Michael Cienfuegos
Photography is recording images with light. Audacity merely notes the noise a shutter makes. This can have little relation to the amount of light the shutter (and diaphragm) pass. Relying on Audacity to accurately measure effective shutter speeds is rather like measuring someone's IQ by the size of their boobs: sometimes it seems to work.
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