Help! Anyone! I want to take pictures of extreme movement with a large format camera. Has anyone ever heard of a lens being manufactured which has a higher shutter speed than 1/500, hopefully 1/2000? I think maybe the central shutter is too complex to allow this. Is it possible to build a spring-loaded double aperture which would work like a really quick eclipse. I know you can use a flash in a dark room with an open lens but what I'm planning isn't possible in a dark room.
Years ago Minolta made a central shutter with 0,5 ms (1/2000s). But with a small aperture. The problem with shutters is one has to accelerate a mass and to stop it "in no time". At a certain mass the materials like springs, bearings and shutterblades cannot bear this forces. This is also a problem with focal-plane shutters in the size for LF-cameras
There are other shutter-systems aviable like the "Kerr-Cell", working with liquid crystals and polarizers. But they need high-tension and other gear.
http://www.kamera-geschichte.de/files/verschluss1_d.htm has details of just about every classic German shutter, and mentions in passing that there were som special shutters that reached 1/2000, but these are rare (and unreliable).
If it is possible to adapt a Prontor 1000 LK or 1000 S to large format (the shutters were made for 35mm cameras), that will probably give the highest realistic shutter speed. I might even have one I could give you...
It makes no difference if your room is lit or unlit. You can still use flash to stop action regardless of a shutter that is slower than you wish. It is simply a matter of arriving at a strobe exposure with sufficient output to override the room lighting. It is a matter of lighting ratios...you can make a fully lit room appear dark with sufficient strobe output. In considering this, if your room light is metered to give a Zone V exposure (in Zone speak) and your strobes are metered to give you four stops less exposure (four stops more light) and you base your exposure on the strobe exposure values, the area not lit by the strobes will appear to be dark.
Another consideration, should you decide to follow this direction, is the flash duration. With large amounts of movement, a shorter flash duration will stop action better.
Last edited by Donald Miller; 18-Dec-2007 at 03:25.
Reason: Further amplification
Thank you all so much for your quick and illuminating replies (no pun intended)! It is a quaint problem indeed. Martin, the Super Speed Graphic was discontinued due to .. wait for it .. mechanical problems. Peter, your information on Kerr-cell shutter systems seems advanced and interesting, although as yet I haven't found a commercial/practical application I can use. If you have more information I would be very grateful. Ole, technical German is I'm afraid uphill all the way for me, my school german is disappointingly insufficient. Donald, I agree that flash/strobe is a possibility and I have used it in similar scenarios before, (see: www.mikkelmcalinden.com , first floor 13-16), but the amount of flashes or strobes needed for my idea would be immense - and I''m still not sure it would work.
Speed Graphics' focal plane shutters' top speed is 1/1000. But the slit's traverse time is on the order of 1/5. I think it might do for the shots you directed us to.
My 5x7" Press Graflex, circa 1921, has a focal plane shutter that can do 1/1500 sec., but like the Speed Graphic, the traverse time is around 1/5 sec., so there could be some Lartigue-type distortions. If you want to capture things like cards flying in midair, though, I think you need strobes at low power for short duration.
What are you gaining for this type of picture by using large format? Why not do it with a 10mp Nikon? It seems to solve every problem. DOF, speed, etc.
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