Testing leaf shutter consistency across speeds

[F4U]

I got out my old book from the jr high, from when the teachers were lecturing and I was "following along in my textbook". Of course my photography books were inside my textbook, so they wouldn't know. Here it is. the Haynes Shutter checker. Never saw one, but I bet it's dead-perfect, if you don't mind burning through some film to use it.

 

[Chan Tran]

I recall in The Amateur Photographers Handbook by Aaron Sussman was depicted a Haynes Shutter Checker, I believe it was called. It was supposedly a phonograph disc that is set in motion and shot on film. I would think the object was to measure the angle of the motion-blurred image and calculate the shutter speed. Of course, those books date back to heaven-knows-when, most likely to be run on the 78rpm record players of the day, which were likely not highly accurate. Today there are strobes and DC motors allowing you to get turntable speed dead-on the money. If you don't mind burning up a few rolls of film, I bet it is still and excellent way to check shutter speeds. But now you can get cheap USB testers off ebay, which work very well on speeds below 1/50, but not so well on faster speeds of leaf shutters. So you'd use the USB tester for slow, and switch over to the Haynes on the faster ones, using up less film. Of course where are you going to find an old Haynes checker?

I can make a spinning disk fast enough and accurate enough using stepping motor even for 1/500. For leaf shutter it would be OK. For focal plane shutter there is a problem that the rolling shutter effect would be different depending on where you capture the line.