Shinkansen

[harrisonreed]

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That rolling shutter though.

Mt. Fuji in the distance, going 300 km/h. Trombone stowed above my head.

[harrisonreed]

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[harrisonreed]

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These pictures were taken about 1 minute apart. It goes so fast!

[robcat2075]

I will be disappointed if the telephone pole doesn't go WOING-oing-oing-oing-oing after the train passes.

[BGuttman]

Actually, some of his pictures remind me of the old ones taken on a Speed Graphic with the 1/1000 sec shutter that's a moving curtain slit. Speeding cars show up with slanted oval wheels.

[Burgerbob]

Great memories of zooming by Fuji on the train. I have some similar video somewhere...

[harrisonreed]

No security check, no real lines, you can buy a boxed lunch at the gate and bring it on, miles of leg room, every seat has a power outlet, and frosty beverages are allowed too. The only catch? It's more than twice as expensive as driving with tolls (which doubles in cheapness for each person you add to the car), even if it's three or four times as fast.

[Estraven]

Speed that puppy up to around 0.95c and you’ll start to see the lateral compression due to the time dilation

But seriously…. (camera nerd alert) That effect would happen with any camera equipped with a focal plane shutter where the curtains are traveling faster than the “X” sync speed. Here’s an example that illustrates Bruce’s comment.

[BGuttman]

There used top be flash bulbs with long flash times to use with those old focal plane shutters. While the actual exposure on the film is 1/1000 second the picture takes 1/250 second to take so a longer duration flash allows the entire picture to be taken.

Nowadays we have very short duration electronic discharge flash lamps so a traveling slit shutter would just get a partial picture.

FWIW, I have two Speed Graphic cameras with this shutter. There are actually several speeds with different slit widths on a long roll of black fabric.

[harrisonreed]

Yet we still have rolling shutter / jello effect

[robcat2075]

Is there an advantage to a focal plane shutter?

I would think it presents the worst case for every parameter about shutters.

[BGuttman]

In the Bad Old Days you couldn't get a mechanical shutter to go faster than 1/250 or 1/500 second. The Speed Graphic focal plane allowed for a 1/1000 second exposure by "wiping" the image on the film and the best place to put them was near the focal plane.

SLR cameras with removable lenses can't conveniently put shutters in the lens (although Hasselblad did) so they have gone to focal plane shutters. New cameras have better mechanisms so you can sync flash even up to 1/1000 second since the leading edge of the shutter and trailing edge of the shutter are not moving at the same time.

I've seen (and owned) cameras with shutters between lens elements (sometimes called "front shutter") and shutters just in front of the film (also called "focal plane"). From a practical standpoint, both work. Yes, in theory the front shutter needs to cover a smaller area, but with the advent of high quality 35mm cameras this has been less of an issue.

[robcat2075]

In cartoons they tried various tactics to deal with a fast-moving background.

In "Drip-Along Daffy" (1951) they slanted it. I wonder if they were inspired by that focal-plane shutter stuff in photos they had seen.

[JohnL]

Is there an advantage to a focal plane shutter?

I would think it presents the worst case for every parameter about shutters.

The Speed Graphic was a special case. They had a "conventional" (for the time) leaf shutter mounted in the lens (adjacent to the aperture diaphragm) that ran up to 1/400 or 1/500 second, plus a focal plane shutter back by the film. They were designed for press photographers, so they needed to handle any conceivable situation.

An FP shutter is out of the way of everything, so it makes designing the camera body and the optics easier, particularly in an interchangeable lens SLR. I've seen SLR's with leaf shutters between the lens and the mirror; the shutter has to stand in the open position. When you hit the button, the shutter closes, then the mirror pops up, then the shutter opens and closes to expose the film, then the mirror drops down again, and finally the shutter opens up again. You also need space for all the leaf shutter mechanism in front of the mirror.

I think it was also something of a numbers game, too. Since conventional leaf-type shutters were limited to around 1/500 second, they were seen as being inferior to FP shutters that could go to 1/1000 second or less - even though the leaf-type shutter didn't distort the image.

Leaf-type shutters also ran into issues with uneven illumination - the center of the image got more exposure time than the edges, and the effect became more pronounced at faster shutter speeds. There was a fix for this; a few designs had each shutter leaf rotate rather than going "out and back". Rotating leaf shutters could crank out a bit more speed, too, but the other issues (like where to put all the mechanism) persisted.

[BGuttman]

Note that there was one leaf shutter that was able to go to 1/1000 second. It was used on the Super Speed Graphic, which was essentially a Crown Graphic (the Crown was identical to the Speed, but lacking the focal plane shutter) with this special shutter fitted. I don't remember the lens used, but probably some kind of Tessar formula (4 element, going to perhaps f/4 or so).

[harrisonreed]

I'm going to be getting my first real camera in a couple months. Was looking at the ZV-E10, which is awesome in all categories except for .... You guessed it, rolling shutter effect.

But yeah, I'm excited. You can get it with the lens kit for about $700 here. I'm also going to get two of those Sigma primes, 16mm and 30mm.

[BGuttman]

Not too much more expensive here:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _with.html

But you should have no reason to import a Japanese camera from the US back to Japan

Cameras nowadays are much more versatile than when I was shooting with my Speed Graphic. Now the electronic ones will shoot still and moving. They come with zoom lenses that also have macro function. They self-focus. They auto expose. My old Speed Graphic is like the old tripod mounted cameras -- more for artistic work than for practical photography.

[JohnL]

Note that there was one leaf shutter that was able to go to 1/1000 second. It was used on the Super Speed Graphic, which was essentially a Crown Graphic (the Crown was identical to the Speed, but lacking the focal plane shutter) with this special shutter fitted. I don't remember the lens used, but probably some kind of Tessar formula (4 element, going to perhaps f/4 or so).

Rodenstock 135mm f/4.5
The Graflex 1000 shutter was an "orbital" type (rotating rather than reciprocating leaves); Kodak made a similar one called the Synchro Rapid 800. It probably could have done 1/1000, but Kodak used the "American" speed scale (1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/400, 1/800) rather than more common "European" speed scale (1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000).

[harrisonreed]

Not too much more expensive here:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _with.html

But you should have no reason to import a Japanese camera from the US back to Japan

Cameras nowadays are much more versatile than when I was shooting with my Speed Graphic. Now the electronic ones will shoot still and moving. They come with zoom lenses that also have macro function. They self-focus. They auto expose. My old Speed Graphic is like the old tripod mounted cameras -- more for artistic work than for practical photography.

Sorry, I forgot that the exchange rate makes it even better. The price is 79,800 JPY, inc tax. Depending on the day, it's a lot lower priced than in the US.