> Anyone got a slick do-it-yourself way to check shutter speed accuracy on a
camera?
I have the article describing the TV and TTBL methods at:
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-shutter.html
now that I looked at it it is lacking illustrations!!! Got to work on that!
But the writing is so concise and clear that you can probably do without pix!!
As for other methods - all you need is some universally agreed upon time
constant - which both TVs and turntables are (well, sort of kind of).
So, you could photograph something like the display of a ... one of those
calculator displays that were with us before LCD ones ... what IS their
name!!?? Anyway, set the display to a 1 and wave it about in front of the
camera while you operate the shutter. Most of those displays flashed their
numeric displays at some fixed rate ... maybe 400 times a second? If you don't
know it look it up!! :) - obviously kind of a pain to time 1 second and not too
reliable at times approaching 1/400 second (!) but in between possibly.
So what else ... well, a falling body accelerates at some rate (known) ... now
photograph a shiny small metal ball next to a scale and knowing something about
the place in space that the resulting blur occupies (there's got to be some blur
to measure against the scale) determine the expsoure time!!!
Hmmmm ... what else ... well, a neon lamp (find one!) wait ... many street
lamps and, in fact, fluorescent tubes, flash at 120 times a second (and some
fluorescent tubes even faster - look on the ballast and maybe find info there)
and these can be used as the basis for exposure time measurements.
Wait ... I got another - a rotating drum camera can also be used effectively.
And making one is pretty simple - which reminds me of condoms. Oh, you want the
connection? Check it out here:
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-high-speed-condom.html
OK - well --- photograph a car driving at known speeds and use the resulting
blur to compute what the exposure time must have been to achieve the blur.
There must be a way to do it by dropping out of an airplane as well.
cheerio,
andy
