Shutter tester for shutter speed up to 1/1000th $14.99

ludoo · Expire: 2011-12-05

Yes, I forgot to leave feedback here: the tester arrived quickly and it seems to work as described. Smile

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

tweeoog · Joined: 19 Jan 2010 Posts: 6 Location: Netherlands

Thanks for the quick delivery of the shutter tester and for mail with the manual. It was a pleasure doing business.

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

bump!

ludoo · Expire: 2011-12-05

Uh, what are you doing with a cellphone? Smile

Gonzoo · Joined: 29 Mar 2010 Posts: 231

Just ordered a boxed version Smile

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

Scheimpflug · Expire: 2011-11-18

alex · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 561 Location: UK

This may seem like a naive question, but does it work with both leaf and focal plane shutters?

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

alex · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 561 Location: UK

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

Shiladitya · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 306 Location: New Delhi, India

alex · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 561 Location: UK

My shutter testers arrived safe and sound early this morning, and faster than I had expected.

Florin was very helpful and prompt with my queries. I've got the Audacity sound editor now (the v1.3 beta for Windows 7), and I'll be having a play tonight once I get an LED light source sorted out.

Exciting!

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

My light source a simple desktop lamp, shutter tester on table camera on top of light sensor. Table lamp energy saver cold light source above lens , it works fine much easier than laser led , bright led etc.

alex · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 561 Location: UK

Quick interim report on the shutter tester, which I've now had for a few hours. (I have both box and cable versions.)

The instructions are clearly laid out and illustrated, easy to follow, and the tips on interpreting the Audacity graphical output and knowing where to start and end the sample are invaluable.

Rigging up the box version of the tester was easy. I used as a light source a little LED thing my wife had given me ages ago that plugs in to a spare USB port (lets you read by a light clipped to your laptop). I held the light source rigidly by holding it in the crocodile clips of a small hobby craft magnifying glass stand, pointed at the shutter, and a couple of elastic bands to hold the light sensor box in front of the lens. So far, so high tech.

I connected it up to Audacity, the beta version for use with Windows 7. Adjusting distances to get a sensible amplitude, not too small and not off the scale, was easy. The version of Audacity I downloaded displays the time axis in units no smaller than a millisecond, which isn't fine enough to tell the difference between 1/500 and 1/1000 in terms of error in the shutter speed itself, so I set the counters at the bottom of the Audacity display to show number of samples between the start and end points in a selection instead, and divided that by the project sampling rate shown in Hz, to arrive at an estimate in seconds down to about 5 d.p. I just keyed these sampling numbers into a spreadsheet that handled all the calculations and displayed measured shutter speeds in the usual reciprocal convention, as well as calculating % deviations from nominal speeds.

The first shutter I measured was my Zeiss Simplex folder, which has a Derval everset shutter, with marked speeds 100, 50, and 25. Being everset, it doesn't require cocking, so I didn't expect it to be accurate, but I did expect it to be precise, and this was exactly what I found. Actual speeds were 60, 40, and 20, and these were reproducible with fair consistency. With these old cameras, knowing what the speeds are is more important than knowing what they should be.

The next shutter I tested was the Citizen leaf shutter on my Yashica Minister III rangefinder, a delightful 60's camera with a non-coupled selenium meter and a shutter speed range from 1s to 1/500. I measured each marked speed twice, using a cable release to trip the shutter. This is what I found.

All speeds are shown as reciprocals of a second

Nominal speed Measured speeds

(I use the UK convention of '.' as decimal mark and ',' as a separator.)

Stone the crows. Speeds up to 1/250th are within about 10%, indeed mostly within 2%, except for 1/125, which is running slow by about a quarter of a stop. The top speed of 500 is actually about 370, or slow by a two-fifths of a stop. This is entirely expected, as it's common for top speeds to run slow like this on mechanical leaf shutters. I think these readings are exceptionally good for a camera that is over half a century old, and far better than I'd expected. As before, as long as the speeds are consistent and precise, that's more important than accuracy.

Most of the few hours I spent on this task were spent in familiarisation and in getting a method going. Once I'd sorted out the right length of elastic bands, and got everything physically stable and lined up, making the readings was a piece of cake and a matter of five minutes.

Well worth the money, even with the Romanian postage costs Florin warns us about.

Now to line up all my old box cameras and Ikontas.

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

Shiladitya · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 306 Location: New Delhi, India

Received the testers an hour back. Plan to test the Voigtlander Prominent over the week end. Shall post the report here. Thanks Florin.

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

alex · Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 561 Location: UK

I've now tested a few box cameras, and it's pleasing how consistent each model is, in particular my old Zeiss Tengor, which is rather more sophisticated than the average box camera, having a choice of three apertures (f/11, 16, 22) and three focus zones, 1-2m, 2-8m and 8m-inf. I've also measure a couple of Box Brownies, and found them repeatable, though with a possibly interesting artefact. I did five or six measures on each.

Here's the measured speeds in 1/seconds :-

Zeiss Tengor : 41, 41, 39, 39, 39 (Avg 40)
Kodak Brownie No.2 : 58, 68, 60, 68, 61 (Avg 63)
Kodak Portrait Brownie : 41, 46, 41, 44, 42, 47, 43 (Avg 43)

I've not yet done any statistical tests, but there may be an interesting effect noticed if you look at the results for the first Brownie. The speeds seem to alternate between a slower and a faster, around 60 and 68. If you look at the second Brownie, it seems to show the same property, alternate exposures oscillating between about 42 and 46. The Tengor doesn't show this.

The Brownies however work slightly differently ; in these, you push down on the shutter lever to take one picture, then pull it back up to take the next, whereas on the Tengor you push the shutter lever, the picture is taken, and the lever returns to the start position. Taking the front off each camera, you can see that on the Kodaks, the shutter disk rotates clockwise for one exposure, then anticlockwise for the next, whereas on the Tengor, the shutter disk rotates clockwise, and then a baffle moves in to cover the aperture while the open disk rotates back to its starting position, the baffle stopping light reaching the film during this action. So on the Brownies, this may be reflected in slightly different exposure times, though as can be seen, not enough to have any effect whatsoever on the exposure value to be recorded on the film.

There, I just knew this would be fun. (Do you think I should get out more?)

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

vfmoto · Expire: 2013-02-08

Shipping to US has dropped form $17 to $14 for priority mail and from 11.91 to $9 for standard mail. Very Happy

Don't have any box testers now but I hope to make another batch in a week.

Cheers,
Florin Wink

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

It is available in my shop from now.

Click here to see on Ebay

fotofundi · Joined: 01 Sep 2010 Posts: 1

Hi
What is the slowest speed it will test accurately?