ShutterDoc: Shutter Speed Test

Measure what your film camera's shutter is actually doing. ShutterDoc measures shutter speeds in ordinary room light.

Take the lens off, open the back, point the phone into the mount and fire. A run from 1/30 to 1/500 on an SLR, three firings a speed, takes about two minutes. A test roll costs you the film, the developing and a fortnight of waiting, and still leaves you guessing which speed was off.

You can also detect shutter capping for speeds up to 1/1000th of a second.


WHAT IT DOES

Measures speeds from 1 second to 1/500, on focal-plane shutters, so most SLRs and rangefinders, and on leaf shutters, so folders, TLRs and fixed-lens compacts. Separate guidance for each.

Detects shutter capping. It maps the exposure across the whole film gate and finds bands that received little or no light, on horizontal and vertical shutters alike.

Puts a confidence on every reading, and says when conditions will not support a number you can trust.

Keeps a library of your cameras, with shutter type, flash sync and notes, tested or not, and saves every session so a body can be compared over time.

Exports readings and capping maps as CSV, for a repairer or a buyer.

Walks you through the setup the first time you open it.


WHAT IT IS FOR

Buying. The seller says the speeds sound about right. Check before the money changes hands, at a flea market or across a cafe table.

Shooting. An old leaf shutter can be well off its markings at the slow end. Measure it once and expose for the real number rather than the marking.

Selling. Show a buyer the numbers rather than asking them to take your word for it, and put the export in the listing.

A shelf of them. Work through the bodies you never tested and find out which are honest.

Servicing. Test it, send it off, test it again, keep both sessions.

CAPPING DETECTION

At fast speeds a focal-plane shutter exposes the frame through a moving slit. If the curtains drift out of step the slit closes partway across and a band of every photograph receives nothing. Rest the camera on a tripod, fire about ten times one speed, and ShutterDoc averages them into one map of the light across the gate. It answers in one of four words, even, uneven, unsure or capping, and says unsure rather than picking the nearest when the evidence will not carry one.

ACCURACY

Verified against a phototransistor rig built for the purpose, on a Nikon FE, Minolta X-370, Canon EOS-1N, Kiev 19, Kodak Retina and Tele-Rolleiflex: horizontal and vertical focal-plane, and leaf.

1 second to 1/30: typically within 5% of true speed.
Leaf shutters: typically within 0.15EV as far as 1/125.
Focal plane at 1/125 and 1/250: usually within 0.3EV.
1/500: usually within 0.5EV, almost always within 0.6EV.

Handheld is fine at 1/60 and below, which is what quick test mode is built for. Above that you want a constant, diffused light source, a monitor at full brightness or a wall with indirect sun on it, and a tripod if you have one. The app explains the setup and ca