How to measure shutter speed for free...

tim48v · May 5, 2020

Turns out you can measure your shutter speed without buying anything!

https://shop.stearmanpress.com/blogs/news/measure-your-shutter-speed-for-free

BrianShaw · May 5, 2020

Clever. Thanks for the information

Donald Qualls · May 5, 2020

Nice! My phone will seemingly let me do the frame counting on the phone in the built-in editor.

pbromaghin · May 5, 2020

Oooh. Just in time for my new Bessa I. I took a break from work and tried it out as far as getting it in slowmo and uploading to my PC, but need to download the trial version of Photoshop video editor that came with Elements. 1/10 second stretches out nicely in iPhone slowmo.

Good find.

pbromaghin · May 5, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
Nice! My phone will seemingly let me do the frame counting on the phone in the built-in editor.

What phone do you have? I couldn't figure it out quickly in iPhone 10r.

Donald Qualls · May 5, 2020

First gen Pixel, though I've apparently still been getting the camera updates (limited astro mode, but night vision is amazing).

gdavis · May 5, 2020

"Nowadays, you're more likely to own a digital storage scope than a record player."
I have a record player, but my scope is analog no-storage.

Donald Qualls · May 6, 2020

Heh. And I own a linear-track turntable I bought new in 1983. Needs an intermittent wire or bad solder joint fixed, though.

And I've never owned any kind of oscilloscope. Not really an electronics guy, at the signals and components level.

pbromaghin · May 6, 2020

Hmm. Looks like it can be done in iMovie. Off to find some tutorials!

europanorama · Mar 21, 2021

forget everything discussed above, save lifetime and get cheap photoplug, all problems gone. save screenshots of the results. since they cannot be saved outside app. set sensor at 5-10mm distance. ask for more informations about mounting light and setup adapter -cable if no 3.5-audio-connector on smartphone. manual is precise not like vmoto who didnt know anything when i had problems with too smal graph...(one should know it must be enlarged. all written in Franz-manual(german precision). he is the man behind Filmomat-autoprocessor-now updated version.
with photoplug one can measure exposure times within 5 min. or less. up to 1/500 Franz told. get helping hand for single-beam light. hotglue cable to the connector to be stiff if you must use a cable-adapter (if smartphone hasnt 3.5mm plug). if not second helping hand is needed to hold sensor.

Sandokan63 · May 18, 2023

Brilliant

snusmumriken · May 18, 2023

I don’t have any significant amount of knowledge on this, but what I understood of mechanical focal plane shutters was that among the hand-held speeds, the fast speeds (1/500, 1/1000) are the most likely to be ‘out’. And with such brief exposures, a very small actual error or measurement error will be very significant.

Would appreciate a commment from someone who knows about this from a repairer's angle.

The author takes the view that those top speeds are rarely used, but anyone trying to make a 400 ISO film serve on a bright day, and wishing to use wide apertures, soon runs out of speeds!

PS - btw, when I looked into it a few years ago (work-related, not shutters) the fastest frame rate available in a consumer device was with one of the lower-res modes of a GoPro.

Romanko · May 18, 2023

snusmumriken said:
And with such brief exposures, a very small actual error or measurement error will be very significant.

At 240 fps it should be possible to estimate faster shutter speeds by the exposure of the captured frame. I have not tried it myself. It should be fairly straightforward to write an application that does the calculations.

ic-racer · May 18, 2023

There have been a number of recent threads on how to test focal plane shutters.

No recent threads on leaf shutter measurement, but one can estimate the area under the curve with a measurement at the center and one at the periphery of the shutter opening.
Shutter speed = ((time measured in center + time measured at periphery)/2)

Niglyn · May 18, 2023

Link won't open for me.
As a camera repair guy, most of these ideas, using audacity for example, don't work for focal plane shutters.
What is often not understood is that there are no shutter speeds. There is only one shutter speed and it is the difference between when first curtain open and when second curtain starts to close, that actually controls now much light gets to the film

First curtain opens, fully exposing the fillm, flash fires and the second curtain closes. This is flash sync speed. E.g. 1/30s

for 'faster' speeds, first curtain starts to open, but when it has travelled half way across the gate, the second curtain follows it to close. So you just get a slit of liight passing across the film. This is 1/60s
For 1/125s, second curtain starts to close when first curtain has travelled a quarter of the way. 1/250 an eighth and so forth.

The curtains always travel at the same speed.

Now, both curtain have to travel at the same speed. If second curtain is faster, it can catch up to the first and cause shutter blanking. Curtains travelling at different speeds will cause uneven exposure across the frame.

Look at my thread on here, build a cheap shutter tester that works.

Romanko · May 19, 2023

Niglyn said:
Look at my thread on here, build a cheap shutter tester that works.

Build a shutter tester for Focal Plane shutters - Cheap, Easy & it Works

Hello Everybody, #1 There are many home-brew shutter testers out there, some use audio to try to detect the speed, others use an Arduino and one sensor (so will not work correctly) and there are better ones that use two sensors. A problem seems to be a misunderstanding of how a focal plane...

www.photrio.com

Donald Qualls · May 19, 2023

Niglyn said:
The curtains always travel at the same speed.

Except in Contax RF (and the Kiev copies). These cameras actually slow the shutter travel for shutter speeds slower than 1/50.

Alan Edward Klein · May 19, 2023

My Sony RX100 has high speed capture up to 960 frames per second. Has anyone tried this on a camera like mine or some other?

Donald Qualls · May 19, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Has anyone tried this on a camera like mine or some other?

I have no video equipment better than my phone, but if you can capture at above 24 fps and have a way to single-frame the resulting video, you're good to go. At 960 fps, you're close enough to millisecond frames (4% error) to measure anything up to 1/500, at a minimum.

How to measure shutter speed for free...

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency