DIY shutter-speed tester: Informed opinions?

[Tin Can]

How many iPhones have a female socket for it

There is no HV in this circuit

Do it

but not I

I do know how, I was hacking transmitters and radios in 1950's

I am a Ham who never uses it

JIC

[ic-racer]

I built a number of shutter speed testers over the years. The best one I made came from plans available on Github:

https://www.largeformatphotography.i...Shutter-Tester

[Alan Klein]

I used my phone to record sound of the shutter and then play it back using Audacity a free app. Very accurate from 1/60th down to a second.

https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/

[nitroplait]

How many iPhones have a female socket for it

Correct. On a modern iphone you'll need the little TRRS headset adapter: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/M...e-jack-adapter

[nitroplait]

I used my phone to record sound of the shutter and then play it back using Audacity a free app. Very accurate from 1/60th down to a second.

That is exactly what Fritz's app "Shutter-Speed" does (The App is free). And you don't need a calculator.

The photo plug just makes it much easier to ID the exact part of the curve that indicates shutter open.


As mentioned elsewhere in this thread - this method is useable for a leaf shutter but not a focal plane shutter. A focal plane shutter test requires several measuring points to give a useful result.

[Alan Klein]

That is exactly what Fritz's app "Shutter-Speed" does (The App is free). And you don't need a calculator.

The photo plug just makes it much easier to ID the exact part of the curve that indicates shutter open.


As mentioned elsewhere in this thread - this method is useable for a leaf shutter but not a focal plane shutter. A focal plane shutter test requires several measuring points to give a useful result.

I tried this method with my Nikon and N6006 with electronic shutter and was able to determine the shutter was right on very accurately. I don't recall the fastest speed I was able to determine that, but it was pretty good.

[nitroplait]

I tried this method with my Nikon and N6006 with electronic shutter and was able to determine the shutter was right on very accurately. I don't recall the fastest speed I was able to determine that, but it was pretty good.

You can certainly use it with a focal plane shutter but you will not know if the curtain travels at an even speed across the film gate - a not uncommon problem with this type of shutters.

[reddesert]

The shutter speed app is very useful even in the free audio version and Fritz is very kind to make it free. Although it's not as correct as a real 2-point focal plane shutter tester, it can tell you whether the medium to slow speeds are slow, sometimes a problem with old mechanical shutters. If you have shutter capping or non-uniformity, you can often see that in the images, but you can't tell if the shutter is overexposing by a stop just from looking at the film. So it's worth checking.

The audio version doesn't work well for faster speeds on leaf shutters (1/125 or so and faster) because there's other noises that limit your ability to find the open/close moments. It works well with a light sensor.

I didn't intend to discourage experimenters with the comment about not building breadboard circuits unless you are interested in learning electronics. There's nothing in one of these low-voltage circuits that could hurt you. Just that if you're not interested in the technical details, your first breadboard will be frustrating. The hard part is not putting it together, but debugging it: figuring out why it doesn't work the first time because you got one of the connections wrong (everybody does this, the one wire that's not soldered or off by one hole), and so on.

[Alan Klein]

You can certainly use it with a focal plane shutter but you will not know if the curtain travels at an even speed across the film gate - a not uncommon problem with this type of shutters.

Can you tell if that's happening with my Nikon N6006, samples below. They seem OK to me.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=...N05&view_all=1

[tomwilliams]

If you want to tinker, that's another thing.

I get the idea from Philip's original post that he's just about ripe to fall into the Joys of Tinkering. It's not like photographers aren't constantly tinkering with developers and developing, alt processes, DIY hardware, camera repair and so on. The runway to those skills generally isn't shorter than the approach to DIY electronics.

Philip - Jump! (but don't forget the breadcrumbs...)