Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]While that makes intuitive sense, when was "once?" I know there is the famous picture of the race car taken with a Graflex or something older, but that type of distortion seems to be more an artifact of huge, slow-moving FP shutters than small ones found on 35mm cameras. But if you had a horizontally-moving subject, wouldn't your subject be elongated with a horizontal shutter? When you have a shutter that is wide-open at 1/30 of a second, it makes senses that you could have some distortion. But when the average shutter can be fully open at 1/125 sec, I think there are far fewer issues. The move to vertical probably came as a result of someone realizing that crossing 24mm of film can be done a lot faster than 36. 2/3 of 1/90 is close to 1/125 sec. While it is tempting to see this as a difference between pro and amateur, it is worth mentioning that the reason why Nikon did not have a vertical shutter with the F is that it did not have a license to use them (nor were they fully developed by that point). See http://www.thatinternetaddress.com/photo/konicaslr/history.html for an explanation of the how and why of the Copal FP shutter in modern SLRS. Mamiya made the Nikkorex SLRs and they had a license. Nippon Kogaku did not have the license when the F came out. Presumably due to the tooling costs, the F was made for 12 years, until the F2 appeared in 1971. So why do Nikkormats have vertical shutters? The Nikkormats were reengineered around the body casting. With a vertical shutter you cut down the number of castings. The Nikkormats were reengineered from the F: http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/society/cousins/cousins05-e.htm and the vertical shutters are cheaper to house. It is noted that it is very tough to redo a body design, and with the huge popularity of the F, Nikon was probably nervous about changing the design. When the F2 came about, it was necessary to retain most of the F's design: http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/society/rhnc/rhnc04f2-e.htm God only knows what was going on with the F3. Probably tradition? That probably also explains the M6 shutter - you have to keep it given the height of the camera. Dante on 9/24/01 3:03 PM, thomas schofield at tdschofield@msn.com wrote: > There once was a line of thought that horizontal shutters gave a more > pleasing perspective for horizontally moving subjects than vetical shutters. > Something called focal plane shutter distortion which occurs when the > subject is moving while the shutter slit is travelling its course. The > subject was not in the same place when the slit started as it is in when the > slit finishes, elongating or compressing the subject. Remeber, even though > any given point on the film maybe getting only 1/1000 or 1/2000 of a second > of light, one spot may be getting its 1/1000th or 1/2000th of light, 15 or > 30/1000ths of a sec. later than another spot (e.g. with a 1mm slit width). > That, I beleive, is one reason why only the consumer models (e.ge. > Nikkormat) had vertical travelling shutters and the professional models had > horizontal shutters (e.g. F, F2, F3). > > Maybe its no longer an issue with modern, high speed shutters, or just that > no one talks about sacrificing this issue to get other advantages (higher > shutter speeds, higher flash sych, etc.), and the absence of people using MF > focal plane shutter cameras (Pentax 67, Exacta 66, Pentacon, Hasselblad F) > for action phtography. > > Tom Schofield > > >> From: Doug Herr <telyt@earthlink.net> >> Reply-To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us >> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us >> Subject: RE: [Leica] Self introduction and first info-seeking topic >> Date: 24 Sep 2001 11:08:24 -0700 >> >> On Mon, 24 September 2001, leica@davidmorton.org wrote: >> >>> >>> Rei Shinozuka >>> >>> "wow, didn't know that. even the n*k*n f3 of 1980 only synced to 1/80!" >>> >>> But the much earlier Nikkormats synced at 1/125th. >>> >>> -- >>> David Morton >>> dmorton@journalist.co.uk >>> >>> " >> >> But the Nikkormats didn't have a horizontal cloth shutter. BTW the F3's >> shutter is horizontal but not cloth. >> >> >> Doug Herr >> Birdman of Sacramento >> http://www.wildlightphoto.com > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html