Interesting iPhone app - shutter speed tester

I downloaded the app this morning. It works as advertised but not all of my cameras give me a nice, well-defined sound "peaks" as shown in their demo. Still, once you learn to read the graph, it can give you an idea of the shutter speed. I'm going to run a few more cameras through it later on today.

I should add, I'm using a 4th generation iPod Touch, not an iPhone.

Jim B.
 
Thanks for the update.

What type of shutters have u tried this w/ ? I am thinking of getting it to test my leaf shutter lenses. I was thinking that a leaf shutter is probably tooo quiet for this type of tester.

Thanks
Gary
 
I bought the app a couple of days ago. It seems to work fine on my FED's cloth curtain, on my Japanese fixed lens' leaf shutter, but the X100 is just too quiet, even with the filter and hood removed.
 
Just gave it a go, and it works well enough - but it does depend on the camera. My Minolta XG-1 gives clearly defined peaks that are easy to read (and still spot on in timing by the way). The Zenit 12 XP on the other hand has such an incredibly loud mirror slap, the shutter noise gets lost in the mix.

Reading my digital Powershot G12 is difficult, because if I select the 1/15 shutter speed, I actually get 1 second between the 'noise'. On the other hand, I was able to read the Fuji X100S's 1/8 just fine.

So yeah, if you have a somewhat quiter SLR or any mirrorless camera... it should work just fine.
 
Shutter sound is not a good way to measure shutter speed. The little phototransistor plug-in option, mentioned in the comments section, is a much better approach. A photodiode might even be better.


Cheers,

David
 
the author of the app mentioned that this works better on leaf shutters. From my experience that's true - other shutter types involve a bit of guesswork on where the peaks are.
 
I'm playing with this app right now.

It's a little buggy. It freezes up and I have to exit the app or reboot the phone to continue.

I do not like the selection of shutter speeds, or having to choose between "old" and "new" shutter speed sets. You can't combine the two and save them to one camera profile. Try doing a Leica IIIc on this app.

It does work pretty good on the speeds you can choose, though. I wouldn't say it was three bux wasted. I'm going to have fun with this, when it is behaving.
 
Looks like the author of this app is a member of photo.net. There is a thread he started over there.

After reading all this here and over at photo.net, I am going to get it. There are several leaf shutter lenses that I own, that I know are off. I have been wondering how far off they were.

http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/00bdOI

Thanks everyone for all your feedback.
Gary
 
I just downloaded and played with it on two different leaf shutter cameras.
- graflex xlsw - need to send this in for a shutter work as I expected. Below 1/15 way off and 500 as well.
- Bessa II - all speeds w/in about a stop except for 500...

Not too worried about the 500 since it is really hard to get accurate measurement. It would help if the time line after the measurement is complete is expanded by at least 2x so that u can get more accurate placement of those measurement bars. Below 250 not a problem.

According to the photo.net thread, the author makes and sells the optical light path sensor adapter for 15 bucks. A total outlay of 18 dollars on such a device, sounds like a pretty good deal if one needs to do this a lot..

For me this is good enough. I just wanted to know if I had any really bad shutter speeds on any of my very old cameras that should be tagged for shutter work in the future.

Gary
 
cheapest and fastest GAS in a while. Not that easy to identify those peaks in a Canon III RF ..but once I selected what to measure it was pretty consistent across the speeds tried. I think it is useful to see if a camera needs more accurate measurements and worth the 3 bucks.
 
Phototransistor Plug

Phototransistor Plug

Hello,
I'm the developer of this Shutter-Speed App, and I just noticed this discussion here.
It's nice that there is mainly positive feedback about the app 🙂

If you want to improve your measurements with the app, I can recommend buying one of my phototransistor-plugs as an extension to this App. With such a plug you can measure the actual light passing through the camera, instead of sound. I already sold several of them, and I got all through positive reviews.
They are available on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shutter-Speed-Tester-for-your-iPhone-Verschlusszeitentester-fur-das-iPhone-/251288249805?pt=DE_Foto_Camcorder_Analogkameras&hash=item3a81f265cd

It would be great if the one or other would try this out, and post their experiences here.

Thanks,
Lukas
 
Hi, does anyone know if the photo transistor's field of vision is narrow enough to allow accurate speed testing on focal plane shutters beyond the flash sync speed? ...the open shutter will be a slit rather than the entire shutter opening, and the duration of the curtain movement will be much longer than the exposure time at any given point. But for the phototransistor to accurately pick up the length of a fast shutter speed (faster than 1/60) it would have to only pick light up from a very small area in front of it, otherwise it would take in light for too long as the slit moved across for a longer duration than t.
 
Lukas, your photo transistor arrived this afternoon and I couldn't wait to try it. I must say, you did a nice job with this. Tested three Nikons and one Leica (all focal plane shutters) and the process worked really smoothly.

I have one question, does the accuracy of the app diminish as you get to higher shutter speeds. It seemed that at 1/250th and 1/500th shutter speeds, all my cameras were pretty far off (which I realize could be the cameras, but two were recently factory serviced). I don't know exactly how your app works, and am just wondering if it might be more accurate in the 1 second to 1/125th of a second shutter speeds. Again, I realize that it could be my cameras that are the problem.

Again, great app and photo transistor plug.

Best,
-Tim
 
I found the app with the plug works Well up to around 125 with the nikon and Leica shutters however I still prefer using an old crt tv and checking pattern for higher speeds.
Curtain speed is as important as slit width for schutter performance and to get even exposure across the frame you need a 2 sensor tester.
 
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