Ok folks, you have a camera old
or new, most modern or vintage, and you love it, but one day you went curious
about if your camera's shutter speed is correct, this test will reveal your
shutter speed to let you know if you are getting correct exposure times. I'll
explain how to build a $5 shutter speed tester, first
of all I need to say I forgot where I got the circuit schema so hoping the
inventor of the circuit would forgive me for not mentioning his name,
appreciations goes to him/her.
Circuit is pretty simple and
parts cost $2 to me, adding another $3 for the laser pointer and other
cable&stuff it would cost same to you too, my pointer is $10 pointer but
you can use a cheapest one. First of all here is the circuit:
It's easy isn't it, if you know soldering
it's a piece of cake, I solder mono plug legs to a 1.5mt (~5' ft)long cable so I can extend up to my sound card to plug mono
jack into my sound card.
Here comes my part, I got a 20
cm x 45 cm wood plate, then I nailed a 1.5cm x 10cm aluminum sheet to in the
middle the wood plate side then I attached phototransistor to it with
electrical adhesive tape, here is my setup:
I installed adobe audition then
plugged the jack into the sound card. You can use a similar sound editor
program as well but make sure it has a good detailed time axis, actually a
detailed and flexible time axis is the only thing you need on sound editor,
Mono sound card jack is put on the wood table for illustrative purposes only!!,
Phototransistor is taped to the aliminum sheet and can not be seen, (well it
can seen actually but if you don't see the setup by yourself it's hard to see,
its on the top of the nailed aluminum sheet and covered with red color
electrical tape, its metal glares; I taped other electronic parts heavily next
to the 1.5V battery to ensure soldered cables won't be strangled up and tackle
other computer cables next to sound card
Now the bad news, recording
especially accurately pointing laser to transistor is actually not really a one
person job unless you have incredible amounts of patience, one should point to laser
pointer to the phototransistor and rewind the camera and activate the shutter
whenever other person is ready for recording with sound editor, * a release
cable is a must * which I forgot to put on my camera when taking my setups
picture. The only problem with the tester is having to laser to point
phototransistor is could be really hard, makes you try several times, you
should put something on the bottom of laser pointer, with a friend (My dear
friend "Mehmet Ozeren" helped me out in this case, thanks to him) or
a forced wife could shorten your testing time three times I can bet!?!.
Also Adobe Audition is gives you
the time accurately if you block and delete unnecessary parts of the recording
and keep the just two spikes which first one is a sign of a opening of the
shutter when the second one is closing, you'll see measuring time is pretty
accurate, more accurate than any affordable speed tester I know of. I can bet
it can measure 1/8000 speeds accurately, longer times? how
about a two hour test if you have the hard disk space for recording. Can you
find such an accurate tester for less than $500 around? You absolutely should
take more than one test on each speed to make sure your shutter speed is
consistent & reliable, actually it took about 45-60 minutes to complete the
test in our first try, my wifes Praktica MTL 5B, I am really surprised to see
how shutter speeds are accurate for a ~30 years old camera (knock on the wood)
except 1/1000 gave between 1/660-800 results after taking at least 5 shots with
tester. Actually Mehmet and me performed three tests
for each shutter speed in average
Ready to have
this tester? Get it,
you can't solder? no problem, have someone solder for you, like a local TV
repairman, Electical Engineering student or someone likes you and electronics a
bit! :)
I put the original circuit file here If you have a question, feel free to mail me.
Last word: "Don't forget to
disconnect battery after you've done to prevent draining it.
