Hi everybody,

I haven't been active around here for a while, but I thought I'd share an interesting discovery I made the other day.

Surplus Shed has a bunch of these electronic shutters right now:
http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/m3259.html

As you can see, they're cheap. I bought one and I've got it set up and working perfectly. It'll eventually make it into a new LF camera I'm building. The shutter assembly is controlled by a simple solenoid. It also has flash sync.

24 Volts seems to be what it takes to drive the shutter. It does work at 12, but the blades seem a little sluggish. I put together a simple relay circuit for mine so I could control it from a PocketWizard. The MultiMAX I'm using works great for a number of reasons:

* I can specify the shutter speed by setting specific contact times in the MutliMAX.

* I can do neat multiple exposure things with the Intervalometer feature.

* The Multipop feature lets me fire the shutter REALLY fast, which not only looks and sounds awesome, but will also lend itself to some even neater multiple exposure projects.

* Since it's a PocketWizard, I can fire the shutter wirelessly.


I've put together a few videos showing the shutter in action. Here's the first:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEif9X8hABQ

and the second (high speed drive mode):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgBEKz6Y8kY


There's still a bunch left to do. I need to figure out just how the contact times in the MultiMAX relate to actual shutter speeds, since I'm going through a relay and a solenoid. I haven't hooked up the x-sync yet, but it's a very simple switch and my multimeter says it works fine. Of course there's the whole process of mounting a lens on it and getting it in a working camera too...

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

-Zack