Copal 0 shutter accuracy

[Bob Salomon]

Cannot remember needing or using the shutter speed of 1/120 second for the many, many thousands of 5x7 & 13x18cm & 4x5 & 6x9-6x7cm film images ever.

IMO, shutter speeds above 1/60 second for sheet film and larger format tool film is not an issue. The slower speeds below one second is more important.
If there is too much light to achieve the needed film exposure, add neutral density filter., which has also been as rare as needing shutter speeds of 1/120 second or higher.

For 35mm or Digital, 1/4000 or 1/8000 at times is not fast enough.


Bernice

Some photographers need higher shutter speeds to ratio ambient to flash or hot light to control how bright or dark the background is in relation to the foreground lighting. For example, portrait and event photography, architecture interiors, macro shooting. Or just to control motion in landscapes, water falls, tree movement in wind, etc.

[Bernice Loui]

Very much spot on Bob.

High shutter speeds are required to control the amount of ambient light relative to strobe for a given image. This is why leaf shutter Hasselblad and similar were FAR more popular with working wedding photographers and similar back in the day. It is also why the focal plane shutter Hasselblad were a lot less popular with these same working photographers.

Identical can be applied to a view camera, but not done as often. Another example of knowing the tools, their abilities, limitations then applying the tools and techniques as needed.


Bernice

Some photographers need higher shutter speeds to ratio ambient to flash or hot light to control how bright or dark the background is in relation to the foreground lighting. For example, portrait and event photography, architecture interiors, macro shooting. Or just to control motion in landscapes, water falls, tree movement in wind, etc.

[LabRat]

The high speed on faster leaf shutters is just a setting where the speed dial allows another heavy spring to additionally push the cocking mechanism to give it a boost to the normal mechanism, but crude to the rest of the system... No way to adjust it exactly...

Bob & Bernice are right, the best thing about a leaf shutter is X sync at all speeds... If you are shooting strobes and there is ambient from sun, room lights, modeling lights etc, you can measure and check the ambient light levels, and move up f stop/shutter speeds high enough to get strobe only exposure (hopefully), without ambient color casts or ghost images from the longer shutter exposure...

Steve K