nikon fe shutter question

[northeast16th]

it appears that on my nikon fe, the shutter is opening from bottom to top, and then closing from top to bottom, which doesn't seem correct. my intuition tells me that the shutter should open bottom to top and then close bottom to top in order for the exposure to be correct.

is this normal? or maybe it's so fast the i don't even see it in real time correctly. the shutter seems really strong and snappy, but this confused me. just wondering if it's defective.

thanks for any insights.

 

[nikon_sam]

It's working the way you'd expect it to...It opens bottom to top then closes bottom to top...it just happens too fast to see the curtain going up...if you watch when you wind the shutter you can see the first curtain come down and just start to see the second curtain go down too...
If it didn't work this way you'd have unevenly exposed negs...

 

[bigeye]

Also, there is no sensor behind the mirror. ;p
.

 

[Dwig]

it appears that on my nikon fe, the shutter is opening from bottom to top, and then closing from top to bottom, which doesn't seem correct. my intuition tells me that the shutter should open bottom to top and then close bottom to top in order for the exposure to be correct. ...

Your supposition is correct.

I don't remember the FE that accurately, but I do know that the FE2's shutter did an extra blade travel:

1. first blade set travels bottom to top to open
2. second blade set travels bottom to top to close
3. first blade set travels top to bottom leaving both sets covering the film gate

This last action was to prevent problems during shutter cocking where the two blade sets could gap causing a light leak. I believe this design was related to the Copal Compact Square shutter's ability to be used with a motor drive.

 

[sevo]

Your supposition is correct.

I don't remember the FE that accurately, but I do know that the FE2's shutter did an extra blade travel:

(...)
I believe this design was related to the Copal Compact Square shutter's ability to be used with a motor drive.

I don't know about the FE2, but the FE, FG-10 and FM2n (honeycomb shutter) don't seem to behave like that - at any rate, the shutter looks different before and after firing.

The F4 has a unusual shutter pattern in that the main curtain remains in fired (down) position until the camera is released. In general, both curtains are in place, releasing first pulls the main metal curtain to top, then the fiber plastics curtain drops, then the metal curtain closes (and the motor winds the plastics curtain back into place). But according to Nikon that was due to the ultra light-weight fibre blades needed to achieve the 1/8000 being not absolutely light tight (even so when it comes to infrared), which would make mirror up operation a impossibility.

The Contax G/G2 (and IIRC at least some of the CV rangefinders) have a somewhat similar double blade set shutter logic - but then, they have no mirror as a secondary shutter.

As the FE2 had essentially the electronic version of the FM2 shutter, with metal (titanium) blades, and no mirror up mode (beyond pre-release on the self timer), I rather doubt it shares that peculiarity.