How to create a shutter

[3Dfan]

There are a few old books that have info on shutters.

Photographic Cameras and Accessories
by Paul N Hasluck
http://lindsaybks.com/bks5/camera/index.html

Hasluck's Photographic Notes
http://lindsaybks.com/bks10/pnotes/index.html

[pauliej]

[QUOTE=Dan Fromm;533614]Eh? If it can't be that hard, why have so few firms entered the business since 1930?

Making and selling at a profit are two entirely different propositions. Life is hard, and business is even harder, re: Kodak, etal.

You may also check the homebuilt cameras and shutter stuff on the f195.org site, I am sure you can get a lot of good ideas there. Hope this helps you.

paulie

[Falkenberg]

I will look into all the different suggestions. Another friend of mine suggested that I make an electronic shutter with a piece of smart glass (http://www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/192/).
With my new camera design I will be able to change between the different shutters.

[Nathan Smith]

I will look into all the different suggestions. Another friend of mine suggested that I make an electronic shutter with a piece of smart glass (http://www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/192/).
With my new camera design I will be able to change between the different shutters.

That's a very interesting idea - please let us know how your project turns out.

Nathan

[nicolai]

Last I looked into smart glass, the response time was still pretty slow (but that may have changed in the last year).

[glennfromwy]

I have a great old Voigtlander barrel lens I gotfrom Ole that I made a shutter for. It's a simple drop shutter with about a 5/16" slit. I made it out of a couple of broken dark slides. One piece for the rear, with a hole to fit the front of the lens. I glued a 1/4" piece of PVC pipe, sized to slip snugly on the lens, to this rear piece. Two narrow pieces of slide material, glued one on each side of the rear piece. The front piece is the same as the back piece, but plain, glued to the two side pieces. You should now have a thing that will fit on the front of your lens, with a hole in it for the lens to look though. Now, for the slide - it needs to be longer than the other part. Cut it to the width between the side pieces, so it will slide down inside the other parts. It will be kind of snug. You need to sand the slide to get it to slip freely through the space. A coat of paste wax helps make it nice and smooth to use. The size of the slit you cut in the slide will largely determine the shutter speed, as you drop the slide. With my shutter arrangement on my 8X10, I can easily get a pretty consistent 1/25, and 1/50 can be done. I hope I make sense with this. I'm not that good at explaining it. I can email a picture if you leave me a PM with your address. Jim Galli has used two old dark slides for a shutter, just flopping them past the lens, with pretty good results. What I don't know is how well any of this will work for a hand held camera. Good luck.

[Murray@uptowngallery]

I talked to a guy who worked at ReCon Optical decades ago and asked if the big leaf shutters (like on the 24" Aero Ektar for example) didn't cause objecionable vibration due to careful damping and low mass compared to the rest of the lens assembly.

He said yes, but the smart part was keeping the blades quiet during motion and allowing the vibration to happen at the start (damped quickly before fully opened), and they could vibrate all they wanted after the leaves closed (doesn't affect the exposure then!),

If you've seen/heard a 4" or larger shutter at 1/400 you'd realize how nice and safe it is between thick layers of glass lens. I wouldn't want to get near those blades if they were behind the lens. I think the spring wire for my 24" Aero-Ektar shutter is approximately 1/16" thick wire (I took it out anyway).

See Jim Galli's darkslide shutter - find a post of his, then goto his website. Not elegant but very effective...uh, I guess not for hand held use..you already have hands on the camera.

Take a look at a Polaroid 95B, 150, 160, 800 type camera - again, not as fast or large as you want, but a pretty slick design that still works on 50 year old cameras. Only thing that goes badly wrong on them is the foam rubber damper at the magnetic shutter catch. Oh, the other thing that goes wrong is me taking cock/release springs out & getting confused. Anyone else should be able to handle that.

My 50+ year old Compurs, Rapaxes, & Kodaks are in cahoots with the camera repair people.

Along the lines of Nicolai_'s suggestion of a Holga-style rotary aperture shutter, I started & was distracted away from a Lazy Susan bearing shutter. Forgotten, but not gone. Hmm, not good for handheld either.

Hard drive head actuator, batteries and a timer. typ. 17 ohm coil, needs 6-12 volts to break away from the magnetic catch (or get rid of it). Forget long exposures - tends to drain batteries.

[nicolai]

If you want to go that way and do long exposures, you could have two actuators, one to open, and one to close.

[Dan Fromm]

If you want to go that way and do long exposures, you could have two actuators, one to open, and one to close.

Its been done. Williamson/AGI F135. Two opposing solenoids, one extends to whack the shutter open, the other extends to whack the shutter closed. But quite a small shutter.

[nicolai]

Yeah, in this case, I think "been done" is good, because that probably means it works.