cheap diy shutter speed tester

[alexhill]

Saw this on one of the blogs I follow (hackaday.com) and thought it was pretty awesome. http://www.rusted.free.fr/speed%20tester.html

[ghostcount]

Made one a while back - works like a charm. I used Audacity. Found better results if you stop down the lens to about F16.

[jfdupuis]

Made one also. However, data acquisition with the sound card is not great at higher speed as there is no DC component. Accuracy especially goes down for high speed leaf shutter.

[Grif]

How about using an IR remote for a tv,,, hold the button down while you trip the camera. Seems the IR in them is chopped at a fairly fast rate.

[bvy]

I want to build one of these.

Is there something around the house or something cheap I can buy that has a mono plug?

[Ralph Javins]

Good morning, BVY;

Radio Shack is an obvious source for new pieces.

Goodwill, Saint Vincent de Paul, Deseret Industries, The Salvation Army Thrift Stores, and other second-hand stores often will have used computer mice, and various headphones and earbuds that will have some kind of a phone plug. If there are ones there that are broken (No, don't do that!), they might just hand it to you. Just make sure that the plug is the right diameter for your microphone input jack or socket on the sound card in the computer.

[bvy]

Thanks! I avoid Radio Shack except as an absolute last resort. Way overpriced. But searching the thrift stores for some misfit appliance that has a mono plug is a great idea. I’ll make a trip this week…

[Fotoguy20d]

I ordered all the parts I needed for mine from datakey. The case came from Home Depot - a nice 4x4x2 gray plastic outdoor junction box. At $6, the box cost as much as the rest of the parts put together.

I find accuracy is quite good until speed gets faster than 1/200s (.005s) or so. Audactiy's resolution is only to .001 second, and the time to open and close the shutter becomes a significant percentage of the total time.


Dan

[bvy]

I pulled one of the three-legged phototransistors off of an old mouse. The instructions reference "the back" of the phototransistor. How does one find the back? Does it matter? (He also mentions inverting the battery if it doesn't work.)

[BetterSense]

It doesnt' have to be a mono plug. It can be a stereo plug; just hook up one channel. Or even bridge L and R together; doesn't matter.