Inside a Camera at 10,000fps - The Slow Mo Guys

What people said

Recommends kenorb · 2015-02 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “What is a rolling shutter? When do I have to be aware of it?”

The rolling shutter is a method of image capture which is not by taking a snapshot of the entire scene at single instant in time, but rather by scanning across the scene rapidly (vertically or horizontally). The implications of using a rolling shutter can produce predictable distortions of fast-moving objects or rapid flashes of light such as wobble (jello effects), skew, smear and partial exposure. Few examples: The rotor blades seem to be swept back more than usual due to the rolling shutter effect. A photo exhibiting partial exposure. Lighting conditions changed between the exposure of the top and bottom parts of the photo. [this video] Shadow of champagne cork shows that it already hit the fa

Recommends D. Lambert · 2015-04 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Why is the bottom half my picture black when shooting with Cowboy Studio remote triggers?”

You're shooting with a shutter speed faster than your sync speed (most likely 1/200 or 1/250). Your camera's shutter consists of two curtains -- the first one opens to begin the exposure, and the second follows it -- closing to end the exposure. At speeds slower than your camera's sync speed, these two curtain movements allow at least a tiny fraction of time between opening and closing, but at faster shutter speeds, the closing curtain is actually chasing the opening curtain, creating a moving slit of exposure. A flash occurring during such an exposure is only going to illuminate part of the sensor - hence, the dark bar. This is a bit tricky to picture, but this video shows exactly what's ha

Recommends Michael C · 2016-07 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “If a rolling shutter travels from top to bottom, why does this image seem to show skew in the other direction?”

You are correct that the image is inverted as it is projected on the sensor and that the mechanical shutter reveals the bottom of the scene before the top of the scene. What you have missed is that the image (with the shadow of the cork falling on the red shirt at a later time than the the actual cork is seen flying through the air) is not a still frame taken using the mechanical shutter - it is a frame capture from a video recording. During video recording the mechanical shutter stays open. It doesn't cycle between frames. The sensor itself is read out electronically in the opposite direction from the direction that the mechanical shutter normally moves - the sensor is read starting from th

Recommends Eric Lippert · 2018-10 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Is this lightning image a natural phenomena or a digital camera artifact?”

The slomo guys have a video that shows the slit geometry very clearly here: [this video] -- in particular, fast forward to about the 3 minute mark.

Recommends Michael C · 2019-05 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Shutter speed -vs- effective image stabilisation”

@JohnG. To see a full cycle of the operation of a DSLR, check out this video from which the above GIF was extracted [this video] . It's cued to a point right before the shutter button is fully pressed. Waiting for the *mirror up* confirmation seems to take forever. It's much longer than the actual exposure!

Cites szulat · 2016-07 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “If a rolling shutter travels from top to bottom, why does this image seem to show skew in the other direction?”

Yes, you are right , the effect is opposite from what we would expect from a shutter moving downwards. And this is because the shutter moved upwards , or, more specifically, it was the electronic shutter so nothing really moved, but the image data was being read from top to the bottom of the image (which corresponds to the bottom-to-top of the image sensor). (and by the way, the shutter animations and cork guy still frame is from the slow mo guys video here on youtube: [this video] )

Cites Ryan · 2016-09 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Inconsistency in camera shutter”

I was watching this slow motion video of a camera shutter [this video] and the scene at time 2:49 puzzled me. All of the mirrors flipped up in sync except for the one in the bottom left shot of the 1/2000s which was late, but still all four shutters opened at the exact same time. How come only one of them was delayed? I would think that for a machine as intricate as a camera, it would need to have extremely precise and consistent mechanisms, but it does not seem so, at least from watching this short segment of the video. Is there a good reason for this?

Cites Hampus Nilsson · 2017-07 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “What are the advantages and disadvantages of each shutter mode of my Sony α7R II?”

The silent mode (only electronic shutter) is as it stated, silent. It makes no noise. The drawback of this mode is that the A7R II (and almost all other cameras) do not have what is called global electronic shutter . This means the sensor is actually read like a scanner from top to bottom, and even if you set the exposure to 1/4000 of a second, the actual exposure is on the order of 1/10s, and will produce quite extreme artifacting compared to the mechanical shutter (that can be set at 1/4000). [LINK] The picture above shows the problem, from this excellent article: [LINK] So electronic shutter is good for a wedding for example, where the subject will not be moving. But is inappropriate for

Cites Michael C · 2018-04 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Do any curtain shutters run in both directions, without reset between shots?”

It's probably the case that someone, somewhere has tried this at one time or another. I'm not aware of any mass marketed camera that has done so. But there are many, many cameras that I've never studied in this regard. I'm also wondering how long the "reset" takes on typical curtains: Does reset contribute to the maximum frame rate of cameras? Not usually. Most modern DSLRs, which pretty much universally have electronically controlled vertical focal plane shutters, have curtain transit times in the neighborhood of 3-5 milliseconds. This gives them flash sync speeds of around 1/250 to 1/160 seconds (4-6 milliseconds). Keep in mind that at flash sync speed, in addition to the first curtain bei

Cites karthikeyan · 2018-09 · Photography Stack Exchange · on “Does a long exposure in DSLR camera have a similar effect to a global shutter?”

Regular DSLRs make use of mechanical shutters [this video] and progressive electrical readouts, and hence images are captured in a rolling shutter. But, when used to capture pictures with a long exposure, where the entire sensor is open for an extended duration, are all pixels of a sensor exposed simultaneously ? The readout will definitely be sequential rows of pixels, but will the data acquired in every pixel correspond to a simultaneous event? The reason to ask this question is to understand whether a DSLR camera may be suitable for an academic research purpose.