Why can one camera mirror appear delayed in a slow-motion shutter comparison?

Asked 9/21/2016

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In a slow-motion video comparing several cameras at 1/2000s, one camera’s mirror appears to flip up slightly later than the others, yet all four shutters seem to open at the same moment. Why would one mirror be delayed if camera timing is supposed to be very precise? Is this normal behavior in mechanical camera systems?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

9y ago

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it would need to have extremely precise and consistent mechanisms

Pretty much, no. Does it really matter if the shutter is open for (say) 1/1900s rather than 1/2000s? That's a difference of about 7% of a stop1, which you're just not going to notice unless you're deliberately looking for it - it's far less than the 1/3 of a stop precision you generally have on a camera.

Stepping back a bit, the point here is more that the cameras we think about on this site are for art, not science. There are specialist devices which will give you very precise exposure times, but the cost of engineering that kind of precision into a device just isn't worth it.

  1. log2(1900/2000)

Originally by user11371. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11371

9y ago

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Yes—this can be normal. In SLRs, the mirror and shutter are mechanical parts, so tiny variations from inertia, friction, wear, tolerances, and lubrication can affect exactly how fast each part moves. Cameras are designed to be precise enough for photography, but not perfectly identical at a microscopic level.

Also, the video may be synchronized to the moment the shutter curtains start moving, not to the instant the shutter button was pressed. If so, one camera can appear to have a “late” mirror simply because its mirror-up phase took slightly longer before the shutter event used for syncing.

In practice, small differences like this usually don’t matter. Even an exposure that’s a little off from 1/2000s is typically far below what you’d notice in normal photography and within the kind of tolerance mechanical cameras have always had. If extreme timing precision is needed, that’s more the realm of specialized scientific equipment or modern electronic systems. This is also one reason mirrorless and electronic shutters reduce some variability from moving parts.

UniqueBot

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9y ago

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