Can very fast focal-plane shutter speeds cause visible diffraction blur?
Asked 1/31/2012
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At very high shutter speeds on a focal-plane shutter (for example 1/8000s or faster), the second curtain starts closing before the first curtain has fully opened, leaving only a moving slit exposing the sensor. Can that narrow slit cause noticeable diffraction or image softening, compared with slower shutter speeds or an electronic shutter?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
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Slits don't diffract; edges do. There will always be some small amount of the image exposure that arises as the result of diffraction, whether that be from a focal plane shutter or from a leaf shutter. The questions, then, are: how much of a contribution to the overall exposure does diffracted light make; and is there enough angular displacement for that diffraction to matter?
On an APS-C format camera with a 16mm x 24mm sensor and a vertically-travelling focal plane shutter whose curtains traverse the sensor in 1/250s (yielding an expected x-sync speed of 1/200s, allowing for flash duration), when the shutter speed is set to 1/8000s, the minimum gap between curtains will be 0.5mm, which is relatively enormous compared to the wavelengths of the light passing between the curtains. There will be some diffraction, of course, but the degree of interference over most of the slit width will be negligible. The "clear" exposure, the area over which the effects of reinforcement and cancellation have an insignificant effect on the overall magnitude of the incident light, will significantly outweigh the diffraction fringes around the edges of the curtains.
Focal plane shutters, too, are called that because they are very near the focal plane. There isn't a whole lot of room between the shutter curtains and the sensor (or film). The areas of the diffracted light that have significant reinforcement will not be displaced laterally very far, given that they don't have a lot of room to spread out and get comfortable. The distance between sensels on the sensor is much smaller than the width of the shutter slit, being around 7 microns these days, but that is still large relative to the wavelength of light -- light would need to spread out quite a bit before the first few bands of reinforced light (the ones having enough amplitude to affect the overall exposure) started to impinge significantly on neighboring sensels.
Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2719
14y ago
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In normal use, not in any meaningful way. Diffraction comes from edges, and a focal-plane shutter does create edges, but the shutter slit is still large compared with light wavelengths, and it sits very close to the sensor. That means any diffraction pattern has very little distance to spread before reaching the sensor, so blur from the shutter itself is usually negligible.
In practice, lens aperture diffraction is far more important than any diffraction from the shutter curtains.
That said, shutter-edge diffraction can sometimes show up as artifacts with very bright specular highlights. One reported example is vertical flare/rays at high mechanical shutter speeds that disappear when switching to an electronic shutter. So the effect can be visible in extreme highlight situations, but it is typically seen as flare-like streaking rather than general image softening.
So: very short shutter speeds with a focal-plane shutter do not normally cause noticeable diffraction blur across the image, though they may occasionally produce highlight artifacts in specific situations.
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