Camera Mechanisms @ 10k fps

Very cool! Thanks for posting!

I never realized the shutter and mirror were two separate assemblies - always thought the mirror raising and lowering was the shutter. And it was also really cool to see how the shutter assembly sweeps down the frame.
 
I knew they were separate, but I did not realize how the shutter sweeps like that with a gap determining how much "light" the sensor sees. I just thought it was super fast as moving. Haha.
 
Skillz said:
I knew they were separate, but I did not realize how the shutter sweeps like that with a gap determining how much "light" the sensor sees. I just thought it was super fast as moving. Haha.
Click to expand...

It depends. You have to understand what your cameras' "maximum sync speed" is.

So on high end Nikon and Canon camera's the maximum sync speed is generally 1/250th of a second. At that speed and lower, the first shutter curtain would move up, fully exposing the sensor (or film), and then after that the second curtain would move up blocking the sensor. So in that 1/250th of a second, at 1 precise moment, the entire sensor (or film) would be exposed, without anything covering it. In this case, each shutter curtain would move, one at a time. This is demonstrated when he shoots at 1/30th of a second, and also at 2 seconds.

At shutter speeds exceeding the maximum sync speed, both of the curtains come into play in order to create a slit of light that moves through the frame moving at whatever speed is dictated by the shutter speed. The slit can be thicker or thinner depending of course on camera settings. In this case, the shutters move together. This is demonstrated as he shoots at 1/1000th of a second and beyond (1/2000th, 1/4000th, 1/8000th).

This is a key concept to understanding how to properly light something with strobes and it's the reason why you can't exceed your sync speed without "weird lines" coming into play or in the case when you aren't mixing strobes with ambient, half the frame or a part of the frame could be completely blacked out. Why you would see anything at all in that case has to do with the width of the slit between the two shutters.

So the strobe would flash, but because there is only a part of the sensor visible only that part would receive the light from the flash (the rest underexposed, or not exposed at all). And to reiterate again, at or below the max sync speed the entire sensor (or film) would be exposed allowing the flash to hit it entirely.

This is actually fairly educational video that could easily be used to demonstrate maximum sync speed as an introduction to studio photography.
 
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Saw this a while back. Really cool stuff, explains a lot.

UnknownSouljer, thanks for the explanation of sync speed, makes sense now.
 
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